Those who were not able to attend your wedding will appreciate these thoughtful and creative DIY keepsake wedding announcements.

While wedding announcements are not a necessity, some brides choose to send them to people who they did not attend the wedding. This is most often the case when a small, intimate wedding is held or the couple has a destination wedding and cannot invite all their friends and family to the ceremony. Wedding announcements can also be sent to business colleagues to let them know that you have changed your name.

Planning Your Wedding Announcements

By the time you get to your wedding announcements, you should have your wedding theme and/or color scheme already decided upon. You may or may not already have your invitations printed as well, depending on how far in advance you begin your announcements. If possible, try to carry over the same style that you used for your invitations to your announcements. For example, if your wedding is beach-themed and your invitations are beach-themed, you should stick to beach-themed announcements as well. This theme will tie together all of your stationery products and ideally your wedding decor too.

Wording Choices for Your Wedding Announcements

How you choose to word your announcements is important. The wording should reflect the style of the wedding (formal or casual) and who hosted (or paid) for the wedding. There are tons of websites that provide examples of wording choices where you can get some creative ideas. Here are two examples of traditional wedding announcement wording:

Casual Wedding, Given by Bride and Groom:

We are happy to announce

Lisa Ann Dooley

and

Daniel Peter Rufle

were married

on Friday, June 8, 2007

during an intimate beachside ceremony

in Negril, Jamaica

Formal Wedding, Given by Parents:

Mr. and Mrs. Leonard R. Dooley

have the honour of announcing

he marriage of their daughter

Lisa Ann

to

Mr. Daniel Peter Rufle

Friday, the eighth of June

Two Thousand Seven

St. Mary's Cathedral

Huntington, New York

How To Make Your Own Wedding Announcements

Now that you have the style and wording of your announcements planned out, you can begin making them. You will need the following supplies:

• cardstock in your choice of color or design
• matching envelopes
• envelope seals that match your cardstock
• high quality color printer

Instructions

1. Using a word processing program (or a designing program of your choice), format the wording of your announcements as well as the color and size of the font. Play around with different fonts, colors and sizes until you find the combination you are happy with.
2. Print out a test announcement on a regular piece of paper to see how it looks. Once you are pleased, print out your announcements on cardstock.
3. Once you have all your announcements printed, address the corresponding envelopes and close with an envelope seal.

You don't have to spend a fortune to have professional wedding announcements printed; they are a simple do-it-yourself project that any bride or groom can make with just a few supplies and some careful planning.