My son is getting married and please don't give me a hard way to go! I need advise.

My mom does beautiful scrapbook cards. I don't know how, but she will teach me. My mother and I are going to attempt scrapbook style of wedding invitation.

The girlfriend has seen my mom's handmade cards and loves the idea. She asked us! How can we tell her we are too stupid?

My son's girlfriend says her colors are light blue and silver. Her theme is 'Fairy Tale'. We are confused. We didn't know you could have two colors and thought the theme was 'wedding'.

My family is small, but her's is not. There will be invites for the wedding with a smaller group and large invites to the reception. She is planning on 150 at the reception.

Can anyone help us with scrapbooking idea?

Congratulations on your son’s wedding.

If you are not comfortable with the idea of scrapbooking an invitation, you really need to tell your daughter-in-law-to-be. I am sure she will understand. She wants it done right, I have no doubt, and if you don’t think you can, you have to be honest. Also, remember that it will cost more to mail invitations that are of an irregular size, with bumps and ribbons and glued-on ornaments and what-not.

But if your mother does beautiful cards and is willing to teach you, then I’m not sure I see the problem. If the issue is too many cards, remember 150 guests does not mean 150 invitations. It probably means more around 75-100. That may still be too much work for you, more than you are willing to do. If that is the case, you must tell your son’s girlfriend. Perhaps you could do the scrapbook cards only for those invited to the wedding and reception, with something simpler for the reception-only I invitees (though I didn’t realize this was done, I was under the impression everyone is invited to both).

A wedding tends to be a very important part of a woman’s life and a huge deal is made of it, especially these days. There are themed weddings, and you can have any colors you want. Remember Shelby in “Steel Magnolias”? Her colors were “blush and bashful,” whatever the hell that is. So, certainly you can have two colors. I didn’t have a color at all for my wedding, but we were very much on the simple end of things.

If you decide to do these cards, sometimes there are local education classes through museums or art galleries or school districts that could give you some pointers. Also, be sure to take her with you when you go shopping for materials, so she can help you pick out glue-ons and colors that she really likes. After all, your idea of “light blue and silver” may be very different from hers.

Perhaps you could suggest scrapbooked invitations for the wedding shower or as the post-wedding thank you notes, but more traditional invitations for the wedding and reception. I recently received a scrapbooked invitation to a baby shower and while it was very nicely done, my first impression was “what a waste of time and money.” It’s just an invitation, after all. I think you would all be much better off using your energy and money toward the wedding and reception, rather than a frilly bumpy invitation that most people are just going to throw away anyway.

Congratulations.
How much time do you have before the invitations need to go out?

100 or so handmade invitations IS a huge job, but you could get nearly the same effect by creating one and then taking it to a local printer for reproduction- if they were printed on a good quality, matte finish paper, I think they'd be darling- maybe a printed or engraved card of say- 4x6 could be hand tied with tiny ribbons to a slightly larger card for a "scrapbookish" effect?...or, with the fairy tale theme, maybe it would be more fun to do rolled up "scrolls" on deckle edged parchment- printed in blue ink and tied with a silver ribbon?(just a thought that popped into my head, but I digress)

(Oh, and Elexina, it's pretty common for more guests to be asked to the reception than to the ceremony- the church is often considerably smaller than the reception hall)

Thanks, MrsS. I'm just not that familiar with wedd-iquette, I guess. Not being church-going folk, we had our reception and ceremony at the same place so it was just one invitation for all.