The best advice I can give any bride is to STAY AWAY from The Knot message boards.

It was the influence of many wedding-obsessed “Knotties” that I came up with the brilliant idea of making my own wedding invitations. Why not DIY? That way, I could save money and still have really nice invitations

Here is the result of many months and many tears and many fingernails bitten to the quick:

Now kids, this is not something you should try at home.

The bridezillas on the Internet will shriek “YOU CAN DO IT YOURSELF! DIY!” But no one tells you that it is impossible to match the ink color to even the same ballpark of the shade of the paper on a home printer. No one tells you that no pen known to man will write on metallic envelopes. No one tells you that you will spend hours slaving over the design and layout, only to have the print shop ultimately screw it up anyway.

And just when you think you are out of the woods, you realize that, after biting off all your nails and spending the better part of three months slaving over the invitations, though it will have cost about half as much to make them yourself, but you wish you had just ordered invitations that were half as expensive in the first place. Even if they aren’t as nice. No one gives a crap about the invitation. Including you.

From now on, I’m saving every wedding invitation I get so that, years later, when the couple is visiting me, I can whip it out and rave about the font they chose or how nicely the paper matches the ink or how they worded the reception card. Because, even if it doesn’t look like much, it cost at least seven dollars and/or your friend’s sanity.

Here’s the kicker: this is a destination wedding, so nearly all of these invitations went to people I KNOW are not coming, to be opened, glanced at, and tossed into the recycling bin.

Rob was right. We should have done an E-vite.