First and foremost
Meet MY Tribe!
If you want to go creep a little, I’ve tagged all of them on Instagram 🙂
So if you’re like me when you give someone a gift or send them anything for that matter you want it to feel personal, never generic. If you know me, you will also know, I love taking pictures. So when it came time to send out the invitations, I knew I wanted them to include pictures. I’ve been friends with these ladies for a long time, so this needed to special, but not bank breaking. It’s not every day you get to ask your closest friends to be a part of your wedding or tell them rather ( as if they have a choice).
Anyway, I wanted each invitation to reflect something unique about our friendship while still maintaining some form of uniformity. These gifts are essentially the first thing, other than choosing the venue, which I’ll write about soon, that I’ve done. My wedding day promises to be extremely exceptional and I wanted each of them to feel that way when they open their invitations. So I decided to take a little twist on the traditional bridesmaid’s box.
Here are five easy steps to making a perfect personal and memorable invitation that your girls will love.
Buy the base materials- OBVIOUSLY
In choosing what to use I had to keep several factors in mind, they might differ for you. Most of my girls live in different states. So whatever I was sending needed to be easy and affordable to ship but still survive the journey and arrive perfectly packaged. I decided to use photo boxes, which made a lot of sense since I was going to put my favorite pictures of us inside. Luckily for me Michaels was having a sale and I got them super cheap. I also decided to give my Matron of Honor a white box since she was already married it just made sense.
Click this link for the box (this is not exact color but same brand ).
After deciding on the container, I decided on inside. I wanted it to look very pretty and very PINK for three reasons.
Pink is my favorite color
It’s one of my wedding colors
I was planning to mail them in time for Valentine’s Day, well except Lisa and Jodi, i see them daily, but they’ll be alright.
So I bought
PINK tissue paper and crinkle shreds for the inside of the box
Gold duck tape to create a band around the box
Pink burlap ribbon to type it up
Gold letter stickers to put their initials on their box (Remember if you have girls with the same first initial to buy more than one sheet)
2. Pick your items
This is the most difficult step. You want to choose items that your girls actually use. Most of mine are either in college or working professionals like myself, so I knew that would appreciate a daily use type of gift. With the exception of Robin, my Mini Maid of Honor and 12-year-old sister. Her bOX was a little different. But I also wanted to give them something that when they saw it they would think of me!
So here were my selections:
a small bottle of wine– get something that matches the color scheme of your box- I go them pink Moscato
Purchase these from any grocery store, Walmart, Target, etc.
Please note: Robin was given an empty wine bottle with a note that said “one day kid.I don’t promote under-age drinking and cute tumbler to compensate.
A stemless wine glass
Initially, I was going to get these with their names on them. I found a 4 pack on Groupon for 32.99! But I was a little negligent. So I ended up going to Ross, they always have those kind of “cute” stuff. I found several different four packs of stemless glass and ended paying a lot less. So I’ll be getting them their personalized gifts for MY NautiBach Cruise 🙂
An emergency kit that included bobbi pins, hair ties, sewing kit, and wipes.
These are little harder to find but Walmart, Target, or even the Dollar Store have them. If you can’t find them in stores make them yourself 🙂 All you need is the empty container and you can buy your items.
A cute pencil and binder clip. I’ll explain that later.
3. Add something that asks
This is probably the most important item in your box. I decided to use thank you cards because again they didn’t have a choice and a Ring Pop to pop the question.
I choose cards from Michaels (I made sure they matched my color scheme)
The Ring Pops you can get from Target or the Dollar Store.
4. Choose your pictures
For me personally, this was my favorite step. Some of the girls I went to college with, grew up with and 2 are my sisters so you can imagine the nostalgia of going through old pictures. In each box I included 2-4 pictures. Some of them I had taken more pictures with than others. This can also be used to determine if the girls you’ve choosen actually should be in your party. Im just saying.
5. Assign meaning to each of your items
Now, this step is optional, however, it just adds some more significance to your box. Remember the pencil and the binder clips? The pencil was for them to write down all of the reasons they were happy to be a part of my special day so when I got on their nerves they would be reminded of why they were here. The binder clips was to hold me together when I started to lose it. I won’t go through all my explanations but you get an idea 🙂
PLEASE NOTE: I forgot to include the note with my explanation, yeah I know epic fail. So please be more diligent than I was.
Once you’ve done all this you’re ready to put your boxes together. Now I will say, this is a great and affordable way to really show your girls how special they are, however, I have 8, 6 of which were in a different state. So remember to keep your shipping cost in mind. I didn’t fair out too badly.
And that’s a wrap! Literally. put everything together and wrap it all up!
Congrats to all the future Brides out there! This process is supposed to fun and exciting so hopefully, this helps make things a little less stressful.
MY DIRECTIVE: Love is a beautiful and wonderful gift. Choosing to share love with one person FOREVER in marriage is an even greater. So for your special day of love be sure to share the experience with people who have always made you feel the greatest parts of what love has to offer.
Please like, share, and subscribe!
Here are some pictures of the finished products 🙂
