One thing I’ve never understood is why beautiful, personalized wedding invitations have to be so expensive. Consider me old school (or even a bit naïve), but it’s just paper, right?

(Just kidding, I know they’re not “just paper” but that still doesn’t mean they have to cost so much!)

As a designer I know that a lot of blood, sweat and tears go into designing wedding stationery, and sometimes that’s where the primo price tag comes from. But just because you’re on a budget doesn’t mean you can’t have the gorgeous invitations of your dreams (that’s our motto here at Pipkin Paper Company so you’ll be hearing it a lot from us!).

With just a little bit of glue and a few sheets of gold foil you can doll up your printed wedding invites and make them look like a million bucks – all while secretly laughing when your guests gush over how pretty and professional they look.

One of the most common questions we get asked by our Etsy customers is how to add some color to otherwise plain invitation templates. While it’s possible to simply customize text and illustration colors to match your wedding colors, instead we usually recommend mounting the invitations to patterned paper to create invitation borders. This time around we mounted a simple wedding invitation template to watercolor art to make these super easy watercolor wedding invitations.

Here’s how you can make your own layered wedding invitations on the cheap.

One of the best things about printing your own wedding invitations is that you have the freedom to make them look however you want. Even if you don’t consider yourself the craftiest of brides, you can still make beautiful, personalized invites simply by starting with a design you love and choosing interesting papers that look amazing when layered. That’s essentially what we did with these sweet vellum wedding invitations.

Just print your invitation templates in two phases, with the text on vellum and the artwork on high-quality cardstock. Then put them together with ribbon or a simple gold brad. We’ll even show you the exact supplies we use to make professional-looking invites without spending a ton of money.