Need help for a budget wedding

[fuzzywuzzy]

My sister's getting married very soon. However we're all on a tight budget as dad's been made redundant, I'm on maternity leave etc etc. I have however managed to treat her to beautician who'll do my sisters hair, makeup and henna.
I have to say my sister is being really sweet about things and says she doesn't need anythig so long as close family and friends are around she doesn't mind.
I've now discovered she's going to email friends to come to the wedding as she's decided that wedding invites would be too expensiveRelatives will be invited via phone !
So my question please help, any good ideas for how to make nice cheap wedding invites (nothing terribly fancy needed), and also I need help making wedding favour boxes too, I can sort the contents out no problem just need ideas on where to get material to make the boxes themselves. All help greatly appreciated.
TIA

you could copy some of these

And get someone to type up the invite info and pritt stick it into the card.

Put some wedding glitter in the envelope, so when they open the envelope their eye is drawn to glitter that is now all over their floor

I make cards fuzzywuzzy, CAT me and I will send you some info & ideas. Where abouts are you? I would even offer to design them for you and tell you where to get the stock and what price. I'd love to help out!

I also have some templates somewhere, of boxes that you might be able to use for favours.

I have made a few batches of wedding favours and you should be able to do them fairly cheaply.

Just a few personal touches will make the day so very special!

These look good and are cheap if you are not confident of copying the others

We did ours on the pc. You can buy really nice paper from Staples or somewhere (ours was sort of "marbled" or parchment or something) choose a picture from Microsoft clip art and do a nice font for the writing. It really doesn't have to be very expensive!

This - Joanna Sheen has a box template. Also fabulous dried flowers that if you used just ONE on each invite, would add a beautiful touch.

These, plus paper from Staples and your own printer, and you'd have some very low cost invites??

Ais.

I did all my invites and orders of service. I had have the outside part printed professionally and put all the inserts in myself using the PC. I mail merged the guest list with the text for the invites so the whole thing was printed. No writing required - just lots of gluing in! I sewed the orders of service together. Clearly all this was before children or I would never have had the time.

For favour boxes, you could use sections (circles?) of fabric gathered up round the favours and tied with ribbon.

Save on the costs by making it a "No kids" do...

StuartC

Don't even go there

StuartC, the grooms family are insisting on flying in from the four corners of the globe, to tell them to leave the babies behind may cause ww3. We're being really frugal and only the immediate family (with babies are turning up) which makes us 30 them about a million....sigh
SD that's a really good idea about invites. Thanks everyone.

hiya, agree with others wedding invites doesn't need to be expensive at all. I made all my stationary and then my mums when she got married. I tend to make all my own stuff for occasions.
soupdragon -- cpu and printer is my best friend too!! you can make lovely inserts, menues, order of service, table plans etc. and print them off.
dingle -- you are sooo kind bless you. Fuzzywuzzy do take her up on her offer she is an excellent crafter.
aism -- I love joanna sheens flowers, have you seen her dried fruit too? I love her shows on create and craft.

Fuzzywuzzy,
i used feathers and glass nuggets for mine. and flowers and homemade paper for my mums.
the nice thing about making your own is that you can tie all the stationary together with a theme running thru it.
also it makes it personal as you can match the wedding theme and bride and grooms personality and likes.
ooo am getting all a quiver just thinking about it, love crafting need a loopy emoticon for the craft threads

we didn't do favours - just bought a few tins on Mini heroes and Celebrations and let people help themselves!

I'm happy to make the invites for you if that would help- I've been in that situations myself and know what it's like (DH made redundant before baby was due- I was 36 weeks). I can do menus/ place cards etc- don't worry about cost if you only want basic, rubber stamping is cheap.

Get your sister to CAT me if you want me to do that.

We gave mini eggs as favours to keep it cheap, but they get left really. Instead of expensive boxes, you could just have the kids go round with a basket and give a flower or something to the ladies if you want to give a gift to guests.

I got nice card and matching envelopes from an art store, scanned a sketch of the venue and voila.

Wouldn't bother with favours, a costly waste of time IMHO. We had none at ours and no-one bothered!