DIY Wedding Card Keepsake Book

Hello! Here we are, the final day in our week of wedding posts! This has been so much fun to blog about and I am definitely in the mood for wedding season! Today’s post is about a great project to do after the wedding – in my case four years after the wedding! I have had a box of wedding cards sitting on a shelf for the last four years and I am very excited to now finally have a nicer (and more compact) way to store them!

There are lots of fun ideas on Pinterest of ways to save your wedding cards.  Some of my favorites involve a metal ring in the corner which allows you to flip through all the cards. While I really liked this idea, I wanted something that could sit on a shelf next to my wedding photo albums. I decided to use a mini-binder which was the perfect size for cards and easy to customize to match my wedding colors! While the mini-binder has the perfect dimensions for cards, it is important to note it can only hold so many. Depending on the size of your wedding or how many cards you received you may need to make two!

Below is the tutorial if you want to create one for yourself! The best part of this project was going through the cards and reading them – I hadn’t looked at them in a while and I am so glad I saved all of them!

Supplies Needed for DIY Wedding Card Keepsake Book

• Your wedding cards!
• Mini Binder (mine was from Target, a 1″ binder that measured about 7″x9″
• Decorative papers – Two for the outside and two for the lining
• Decorations for the cover
• Ribbon
• Hole punch
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Glue stick
• Paper cutter

Step One:  Cover the top of the binder. The first thing to do is cover the binder. I chose to use two different sheets of paper to cover it – mostly because I didn’t have two sheets of the floral paper! I like how it turned out, though, using two different sheets and would do it this way again even if I had more paper! If you do it this way, you will need one 8.5″x11″ sheet for the cover of the binder (my periwinkle paper) and a 12″x12″ sheet of paper (my floral paper) for the remainder of the binder.

The solid periwinkle paper covers the top of the binder. The piece of paper should be 5/8″ larger than the top of the binder on the three outer edges. This is so you can wrap the edges of the paper around the binder.

I wanted to mitre the corners of the paper.  To do this, I marked 1.25″ in from the edge on the side of the binder.

Cut out the squares on each corner.

Score the paper along all three edges and fold them in.

Step Two: Glue cover to the top of the binder. Using your glue stick, glue the paper cover to the binder starting with the top and bottom edges. When you get to side of the binder, fold in the corners along the diagonal line you drew in the step above. Hold edges down until they are secure!

Step Three: Cover the remainder of the binder with the second sheet of decorative paper. Prepare the piece of paper in the same way you did the first sheet. I cut mine so the paper would wrap around the binder and show 1.75″ on the top of the binder. Make sure if you have a patterned paper your paper is going in the right direction – you’ll notice in one of these pictures my pattern is upside down! (I had to redo it, luckily before it was stuck down!)

When you are ready to glue the paper to the binder, start with the edge that shows on the top of the binder. Glue this down in place. Then move on to the three outer edges and glue them down the same way you did the first piece of paper. While the glue is still wet, close your binder – waiting to do this may cause your paper to tear. 

Step Four:  Add the decorative ribbon. If you plan to add ribbon to your cover, this is the time to do it! Doing it now will allow you to hide it on the inside under the lining.

Step Five: Add the lining. I love this part because it makes everything look so neat and crisp! Measure how large your lining should be. I used two sheets and slid the one edge under the metal binder rings. I marked where the binder folds so I could score and fold my lining along that line as well. This was necessary to keep the lining in place and intact when you close your binder. I created the lining to show 1/8″ of the cover paper along the edges.  Glue the paper down using your glue stick. Push the lining into the fold line and close your binder as you press it down. 

Step Six: Decorate the cover! I used some adorable bride and groom cupcake toppers left over from my wedding shower. 

Step Seven: Add your wedding cards!  I created a template on a piece of card stock to help mark where my hole punches should go.  I placed my hole punches 1/8″ in from the fold. 

**Update: I used a single hole punch to manually punch all of my holes. You could use an adjustable 3 hole punch, as one thoughtful reader pointed out, to make things easier. This would be especially helpful if you have lots of cards!

The best part of this Wedding Card Book is that it can sit on our shelf next to our other albums! I love the floral paper and how easy it is to flip through all of our cards!

So this post wraps up my week of wedding posts! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! Now I am in the mood to go to a wedding!! Hope everyone has a nice weekend and I will be back Monday with a fun DIY project with a free printable!