Party Invitations
For my daughter's Hogwarts party, I did not want to purchase the usual pre-packaged birthday invitations. If you're going to do a theme party, you have to do it right :) That means I got to be creative with my invitations.
After reading many party sites, I patched together several ideas to create an invitation that looked like the Hogwarts letter Harry received on his 11th birthday. To start with, you need to find the perfect parchment paper to print your invitations on. I found mine at Walmart. It was a thicker stock, beige, with flecks. Looked just like parchment paper :)
Since we were inviting about 15 kids to this party, hand-writing each letter was out of the question. I found several great Harry Potter fonts on MuggleNet and used them in my design. Each letter was printed in green ink and an image of the Hogwarts crest was adapted for the letterhead.
The invitation read as follows:
Dear [friend],
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for Eva’s 7th Birthday Party.
The Hogwart’s Express leaves Newcastle Station (located at [address]) at Eleven O'clock AM sharp on October 6th, 2007 and the journey will last 3 hours. Please RSVP by Owl or by the Muggle telephony system at [phone] by Saturday, September 29th.
We look forward to your arrival at Hogwarts.
Respectfully,
[name],
Deputy Headmistress of Frolic
and Feasts, Hogwarts Academy
Of course that can be modified for your own personal needs but you get the general idea.
Matching envelopes were purchased from the dollar store to save money. I used the same Hogwarts logo as I did on the letterhead for the top left corner of the envelope and each child's name & address was printed in green ink, Harry Potter style, on the front of the envelope. I wanted to seal each envelope with a red Hogwarts wax seal. To make the stamp, I carved a small potato with the letter "H" for Hogwarts. For the sealing wax, I just used melted candle wax, which in hindsight was not the right kind of wax because they didn't really stick to the envelopes and I had to glue them on by hand. In the end, the effect was quite nice and all the kids loved them and really thought they were authentic.
Invites were sent about 4 weeks in advance to give people lots of time to respond and a better chance that they wouldn't already have plans. As rsvp's started rolling in, I took down the proper spelling of each child's name as I would need it later for the party.
Next post: Part 3 - Decorations.
3 comments:
We're putting on a HP party.
What did you do for the decorations?
How funny! I emailed your blog to my hubby and he commented! I was so excited to read your post as I really liked how you worded your invitation and all your helpful tips, but was disappointed to see that you didn't write part 3. We are completely uninspired when it comes to decorations and would love to know what you did. If you'd rather, you can email me at mirissad at gmail dot com. If not, thanks for all the help you've given us already!
Part 3 is up! Enjoy :)
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