Made own bar mitzvah invitations?

singleagain

Wed, Jul 01 2015, 4:28 pm

when I was bat mitzvah, we printed our own invitations, bought some nice stationary, and printed on our inkjet...

but, if you want I can help design a bar mitzvah invitation:

basically:

1) you only need something the size of a post card, it really doesn't have to be very fancy
2) if you are having a shabbat party/kiddush & a day party, they should be on different invites, unless you're inviting everyone to both
3) you don't really need a response card, just an email/phone number, you can even set up a special email just for this
4) you don't need to have a monogram, but can if you want, just don't make it so big

5) also find out what the print store prices are regarding -paper type, -colors, -pictures, -fonts .... like don't get attached to a font and then find out that the printer can't do it.

Fox

Wed, Jul 01 2015, 4:43 pm

I'm probably the wrong one to ask, because my DDs and I made pretty crazy, over-the-top invitations to my youngest DS's bar mitzvah.

First of all, understand that invitations are a big deal to me. In fact, I'm more interested in the invitations than the photos. I realize that puts me in a small minority, but what can I say? I love different papers and fonts and all the stuff that goes with fancy invites!

So here's what we did:

I purchased blank brown cards with cream envelopes and vellum inserts.

On the cover of each brown card, we created several layers of contrasting textured paper and ribbon. We printed sepia-toned pictures of my son and decoupaged them to 1/4" thick wooden disks. We then used a stamp with his name, an embossing gun, and embossing powder to add his name to the front of the card.

We printed the vellum with the actual invitation and used double-stick craft tape to secure it in place.

Even including all the craft equipment we needed, the cost was about a third of what invitations from a stationer cost.

The good news: Our invitations were the talk of the town. They were not only unique, they were handcrafted. I found out through the grapevine that one particularly wealthy woman with a child in my son's class said, "I can't compete with this; this isn't about spending money."

The bad news: They were such a potchke that my DDs claim they'll send out their chassunah invitations by email. "The time we made bar mitzvah invitations" is still notorious in our family.

Bsimcha

Wed, Jul 01 2015, 5:01 pm

Fox wrote:

Wow!
How long did it take to make?
I personally hate getting nicer invitations as they go straight in the garbage...

Raisin

Wed, Jul 01 2015, 5:16 pm

We made our own very nice bar mitzva invitations. (but much simpler then foxs) We bought a heavy cream cardstock and matching envelopes from a stationary store, and printed the invitations. Everyone who was invited was invited to everything so we just made one card with all the info on. We printed separate thank you cards but included email and phone info so people could reply by text, email or old fashioned post. My husband designed them. For ideas we looked at some frum printers websites since they had lots of examples of bar mitzva invitations.

While you are already buying the card and so on, make thank you cards and get matching envelopes. Your son can already start writing the cards when people send gifts in advance.

btw for benchers we bought benchers with a blank cover from a printer, (much cheaper then pre printed benchers) and bought clear labels and printed on them bar mitzva of xxx on xx date etc.