A Crafty Way to Ask Your Bridal Party to Stand Up With You


By Katelyn League, Here Comes The Guide Regional Sales Manager

I’m a lover of all things DIY, and a graphic designer with a teensy addiction to paper crafting. And I’m also a bride, so naturally I’m incorporating my obsession into my wedding details. One challenge came when my fiancé, Dale, and I wanted to come up with a creative way to ask our bridesmaids and groomsmen to stand up with us at our wedding. We felt that a DIY project would add a personal touch to let them know how much more meaningful our day would be if our “besties” were right beside us.

I decided to ask my sister and my two best girlfriends to stand up with me. Unfortunately, all three ladies live over 800 miles away, so a day trip to treat them to brunch and ask each in person wasn’t exactly feasible. I had a vision of the type of snail-mail invite I was after, but needed a little photo inspiration to bring my ideas together. I searched Pinterest for weeks, but nothing quite fit the bill…so I ended up combining several of my ideas into one.

Bridal Party

The first task was purchasing all my materials [see the Materials list below for sources]: wooden cigar boxes, patterned scrapbook paper, craft paper envelopes, bars of me and my gals’ favorite Chocolove XOXOX chocolate bars, vodka minis and drinking straws, mini-Altoid tins, paper shreds, white jewelry-size gift boxes, striped doodle twine and some good ol’ rubber cement.

Cigar Boxes

Then came the fun part—putting the pieces together. I lined the wooden cigar boxes with floral scrapbook paper, and placed the paper shreds in the bottom of each box so that the contents had something to rest upon.

Bridesmaid invitation Boxes

Inside the cigar box would go some special goodies: Each white jewelry box held a personal message to each the recipient asking them to be my bridesmaid, which I’d printed out on my computer and then folded into an accordion shape.

Bridesmaid Note

I put some color swatches and paper printouts of flower and dress inspiration in the envelope, so the bridesmaids-to-be could see the theme Dale and I were trying to achieve. (Surely, you’re wondering how we came up with our wedding color palette, yes? It was partly inspired by this article.)

Bridesmaid Dresses

Bridesmaid Colors

The signature cocktail for me and my gal pals has always been a screwdriver, so I included the mini-vodkas, straws and Altoids as a reminder of my single days.

Bridesmaid Invitation

For the groomsmen, we found several ideas on Pinterest, but again, wanted to create something of our own. Dale loved the idea of customized bourbon/whiskey bottle labels that doubled as his invite to his guys, so we went with it! He has a few “go-to” bourbons, but one of his favorites is Jim Beam. Luckily, this bottle’s label was relatively easy to redesign. I have over a dozen years of experience using Photoshop in my design work, so we put my skills to the test. With Dale’s help, we did a darn good job of matching the Jim Beam fonts, and came up with a label that looked almost identical to the original. We really wanted to see if the guys even noticed when they pulled the bottles out of those brown paper bags. I wish we would have captured the looks on their faces…absolutely priceless!

Jim Beam Invitation

DIY may not be your thing, and I totally get it. It.is.not.for.everyone. But I find people always appreciate the extra thought and effort—our bridal party sure did! I couldn’t be happier with the way these projects turned out, and hope this inspires you to get creative when asking your guys & gals to be part of your big day.

Katelyn and Dale


Materials

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