My wife and I got married in Utah in 2005. We wanted to have a memorable yet affordable ceremony in a beautiful location. We started thinking about things we'd need to buy or create for the wedding, and the invitations were one of the biggies. Of course, we could have done a standard card and had them done pretty quickly and easily. However, we wanted to be a bit creative, and make something that we had never seen before.

We were enjoying a nice bottle of wine one evening, and I started looking at the actual bottle and the label. I wondered how hard it would be to scrape the label off, and put our own custom labels on the bottle. I took the bottle we were enjoying after it was empty, and put it into some warm water in the sink. After about 10 minutes, the label peeled off very easily. A blank canvas!

I then started thinking about how we could create our own labels, and what we would do with them. How would we be able to convey the time of the wedding, the date, location, rsvp information, and directions? We didn't want to clutter up our labels, so it was a hurdle. Then it came to me? I do some web design, so we created a page on our personal website with the actual "invitation" which included the instructions, location of the event, and all of the other important details for the wedding. The only thing I needed to include on the label was a link to that page!

We took one of our favorite photos from a previous trip out to our wedding location, and opened it up in Adobe Photoshop. I went to the Filter>>Artistic>>Colored Pencil Tab, and with that, the photo was transformed into a very artsy, beautiful label photo! From there, I simply typed in "Moab Merlot" and put a fake vintage on there. We happened to get married on September 11, 2004 (the significance of that day is that it is my mom's birthday, and my aunt's - we thought it would be a good way to remember our anniversary, and have something positive to remember on that otherwise memorable date).

At work, we had a bunch of old UPS shipping labels in a file cabinet. They are a perfect size since there are 2 of them on an 8 x 11 sheet, so they feed into a printer very easily. If you don't have these, you can probably get blank labels at any office supplies store. I printed my creation and stuck it on the bottle. You can see how it looked in the photo to the left!

We then printed some smaller labels to put on the back of the bottle. Very simply, it said that this was your wedding invitation, and it had a link to the webpage that I mentioned. If you aren't a web designer, and don't know of any, you can perhaps make a myspace.com page, or use another free service to make your "online invitation."

We went to a large wine-store in our area and bought about 30 bottles of some reasonably priced stuff. We then took them home, scraped off the labels, and then went to work. I hope the winery doesn't mind that we did this! At least the small band at the top of the bottle told where the wine was made, so they still got credit. We then delivered the bottles to all of the folks that we wanted to invite. You'll need to pack them with lots of padding if you plan on mailing them in a box. Also, you'll need to see what the laws are with shipping liquids/wine in the state you are in, and the state that you are shipping to. We can't take any responsibility for any broken invitations or laws! You can also get a few cases of N/A wine if you are concerned about it.

The invitations were a big hit. We received so many compliments for our creative efforts. It was an invitation that people could actually taste and enjoy, and also included all of the important information they needed!