For the event,
Elle's Baptism, we had two invitations. That is not including the digital
Save the Date, which was posted to our Facebook page.
A. "Will you be my Godparent?"
In the Philippines, there's no traditional way of asking someone to be one of the Godparents.
Or none that I know of, at least. It has become acceptable to be simple and straightforward
as long as it comes with sincerity, since it is expected that you get your closest of friends. However, given how much these people would mean to Elle, I did not want to just text them and ask them to play a major role, not just during the baptismal ceremony, but also in her life and growing up, eventually. I had seen plenty of "
Will you be Bridesmaid?" invitations, and most of them were gifts for the girls, such as cosmetics, jewelries, or bottle of wine. It was too... bridesmaid-
ish, so we scratched those out. I continued looking for ideas, until this
box, which was featured in the Wedding Chicks blog.
This is probably the simplest, but the most genuine/heartfelt out there. Bethany (
the bride), tackled the usual details, such as the dresses. There were inspiration boards and paint chips to give an idea of the wedding theme and motif. A list of bridesmaids were included, along with the reason why they were chosen. She even talked about the role that every girl will play. I appreciated its sincerity -- she gave not material gifts, but a piece of her soul.
I fell in love with this idea; I feel like people had taken advantage of the term '
Godparent'. Nowadays, people choose based on financial or social status. I personally was asked though I had no idea who the child's parents were. The world
had forgotten its true meaning. This is very important --
as I've said before, I am a people person, and I value relationships. I want them to know they were chosen for a reason. So a text message wasn't considered an option.
Thus... our "
Will you be my Godparent" box project. I wanted to put photos for inspiration, but figured it won't matter as much compared to a wedding, since our theme was basically anything dainty and we didn't have any motif or requirement on what to wear. I decided to just go with the cards.
The original idea was to use cigarette boxes and scalloped cards. But that's out of our budget. Instead, I used cardboard boxes that I got from
Divisoria. So that it won't look too plain, I decorated them with washi tapes, and placed chocolate gold coins (
for luck -- I am part Chinese). As for the cards, I created the templates using Microsoft Word. I laid out all info, making sure each postcard was progressively longer. We had a total of four cards, which I cut one by one to create the '
scalloped' look.
I had fun making these. A lot of work was involved, but they appreciated the thought, so it was worth it. I was happy that it turned out pretty. I even got positive feedbacks. [
They called me a true crafter OMG guys!]
B. The "Official" invitation
These were given to guests as their formal invitation. All other invitations didn't have details, except for the date, so these served as their guide.
Choosing the design was probably the hardest part. I had the theme '
dainty' in mind, but searching for it returned too many ideas. In the end, I opted for the simple floral design. I chose to have not just one card (
too simple), but three; one rectange, one square, and one circle. I created the templates using Microsoft Word using the same scalloped idea. I even DIYed our envelopes (
sadly, it wasn't in one of the pictures from our photographer).
I remember how it was trying to find the perfect font. I named this blog
oncapriceandwhims for a reason. I probably had downloaded more than ten fonts. You can just imagine mixing and matching. When I finally had decided on the font combo (
i.e. cursive + non-cursive), there was the color motif. There were dozens of templates in my Drafts; only the colors of text were changing. I let my husband choose, which was no use --
he basically just goes with whatever. In the end, I picked out this mix of
aqua x pink x blush.
Here is a list of Fonts that I used:
*
Splendid66 (Typewriter-faced)
*
Great Vibes (cursive font)
*
Ever After (non-cursive)
Our expenses:
* PhP7 per box, total of PhP70 for ten boxes
* less than PhP50 for the chocolates
* more or less PhP500 for printing
* more or less PhP300 for paper (
including the ones we used as envelopes)
Total of PhP 920 for ten "Will you be my Godparent?" invitation boxes and thirty formal invitations.
Not bad.
I still have all templates with me. All were saved as Microsoft Word
.docx file, so you can just edit to change the name and details.
I am willing to share them to you if you're interested! Just hit my
mail.
Happy planning! Happy crafting!
