Yep, I made my wedding invitations from grocery bags

We started with wanting to make the invitations ourselves and wanting to use kraft paper. The thing is that kraft paper is expensive… but old recycled Whole Foods brown bags are free!

I had hoped to make the whole invitation and envelope with these bags, but once I ran some test jobs on our not-so-bright and not-so-powerful ink jet printer (I definitely wanted color color color and lots of it) I realized the invites were all dulled out by the brown bag.

Here is my advice to others that want to try paper bag invitations, or something similar:

• No matter how perfectly I cut out the paper bag into 8.5×11 pieces, the inkjet printer would NOT recognize it as paper. I had to tape each piece onto a piece of copy paper and trick the paper to go through. I had to do this eighty times. (YES I reused the same piece of white paper until it jammed a couple of times and then I would replace it.)
• It really helped when I ironed the paper bag. It gave it a little stiffness and got out many of the creases and wrinkles and definitely helped prevent many jams in the printer after I adopted this strategy.
• If you find a typo AFTER you have mailed half the invitations or licked and sealed the rest, there is nothing you can do except text your best friend obscenities about what a moron you are and try your best not to shake your boyfriend out of bed because he didn't catch it. Chances are, your guests will not care and they will be able to figure it out. It just means you ar not as perfect as you thought. 😉