Destination invitation

As a lot of you lovely readers may have already realised, P proposed to me in Indonesia earlier this year in just the most incredible and romantic setting. . .  So much so that we have decided to go back out there next year to get married with our very closest family and friends; I have never been so excited about anything.

Whilst our friends and family have been excitedly planning and booking their holiday's in SE Asia, I have been doing my best to make bits and pieces for the wedding. The first thing on my rather long list was to do the invitations.

I knew immediately what I wanted to do, but how to source all the material and put it all together was a bit more difficult. I wanted to create something fun and exciting for everyone to receive and thought that considering we are getting married on an island "A message in a bottle" would be the perfect way to capture imaginations. I hoped that this would help to fuel their excitement, especially as the colder, darker months are drawing in.

After designing the front and back of the invitations on the computer I coffee stained them along with all the labels and let them all dry before burning the corners and edges to give them a look of antiquity.

Using a calligraphy pen I tried to do my best at writing the labels myself- let met tell you, this was not an easy task! I'm not entirely sure what I think of my attempt at calligraphy-ish writing, but I wanted to personalise the bottles and this seemed to be the best way at doing it!

Once the paper had dried I rolled it as tightly as I could. I do recommend if you are doing this yourself that you don't use paper over 80g as it becomes too hard and thick to roll. As my bottles were long and thin also I needed to make sure that the rolled up map/ invitation would fit down the neck.

Once rolled I tied blue ribbon around it to keep it in position and then slid it down the neck of the bottle and in to the sand. I allowed the ribbon to hang out of the bottle so that it was easier to pull out when received.



My great friend Emma kindly bought me a huge jar of sand up from Bournemouth beach, thank you Emma! We managed to funnel it in to the bottles and I then used a heart hand cutter on some pearl coloured paper to produce tiny little iridescent hearts. I then dropped these in to the bottles and shook them around, leaving little surprise love hearts for the recipient to find embedded in the sand.

Finally I tied the ribbon in to a bow and tied the tag around the neck of the bottle before pushing the cork in to secure it all.

 

On the back of the tag I used this as valuable space to put "useful information" about flights, accommodation etc. Vital bits that the guests might need to know when booking and hopefully saving us from too many questions!

Finally I packaged them in to small brown cardboard boxes covered in bubble wrap and sent them on their merry ways!

The responses (thus far) have been really really wonderful with most thrilled that they have a momento to keep for ever. Although, I have had one or 2 guests not realise that the invitation was in the bottle itself and that they had to open the cork to pull the invite out. Not mentioning any names (Mummy and Daddy of the bride ;) ) two people were sure that the "thing" in the bottle was a cinnamon stick!!! So, do be warned that you might need to add on another little sticker, like "pull me" to the cork top so that people know what to do!

In case you want to know, I bought my bottles from here . They are beautiful, sturdy glass bottles that have survived post men, trains and planes to get to their destinations! Thank you Wares of Knutsford!

Would love to know what other people do for their destination invitations and how any one else getting married abroad is getting on with their preparation!

Emi x