Postmarked With Love

Looking for unique ideas for DIY wedding invitations? Try vintage postcards! Here are instructions on making one-of-a-kind invitations for your wedding:

1: Collect

Go to a local antique store and ask to view their postcard section. The best categories are the obvious “Romance” but you can score some great ones in the “Novelty” or “Comedy” section. If you don’t have access to many antique stores or don’t have the time, another option is to do a postcard search on the always reliable Etsy.com. There are many collectors that sell their postcards on the site, making it a fast and easy way to bulk up your own collection of potential invitations.

2: Erase

Now that you have accumulated your postcard collection together, you’ll find them in various states. Some will be blank, others written on in pencil, and most commonly, inscribed with ink. Pencil is easy to erase but ink can be trickier. Try using diluted bleach and some Q-tips! Bleach over the pen and wait for it to dry, repeating if necessary. This should work fairly well.

3: Write

There are so many different ways to make your mark on these old cards. The first and most straightforward (but tedious) is to find a friend with excellent penmanship and have them write the old fashioned way with pen and ink. Another idea is to use a typewriter to hammer out your invite! A third (and perhaps the easiest) route is to buy some clear labels from an office supply store and print our your text and place the labels on the card. Voilà–you have your invites!

4: Send

Now that you are ready to send these beauties off to your guests here are a few tips. First off, and as counter-intuitive as this may seem, send them in envelopes! Some may already be postmarked from the past so you want to make sure they get there. There are plenty of options for cool envelopes out there–just make sure your postcards will fit!

After all that hard work, it’s difficult to stick a boring “forever” stamp on there so why not go the whole nine yards and get custom stamps made that fit your style? It’s easier than you think. Go to Zazzle.com and choose from hundreds of designs (or upload an original design) and they will make you real postage stamps for your invites!

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