FMP: Experimentation - The Banner

I wanted to experiment with creating a banner as I was thinking of including it in my wedding invitation design (and I used this tutorial as a reference), so I opened up Illustrator and typed in the dimensions 460x230mm. Once that was done I clicked on the shape tool and made a rectangle shape with the dimensions of 350x50mm.
I made the fill white and the stroke cream - as my colour scheme is cream/gold/white - and de-selected the "Scale Strokes & Effects" in the Transform tool.

I then copied this rectangle but instead of just pasting it, I went to Edit > Paste in Front and did this twice.

For the first rectangle I clicked on the little left-hand box in the centre in the Transform tool, and changed the Width to 80px and the Height to 50px. I did the same for the other dimensions-wise but clicked on the right-hand box in the centre line.

Selecting the box on the left, I went to Object > Transform > Move and it brought up a new window. I typed in the following details.
I did the same for the right-hand box but with the opposite details.

So I have this so far:

Selecting both of the two small boxes, I go to Object > Path > Add Anchor Points. I select one of the centre points and go onto Object > Transform > Move again and put in the following details. I do the same for the other box but with different details.
I then moved these two boxes; one is slightly above, and the other below. Once done I then quickly swapped the two as I preferred it the other way.

Now it's time to connect them all! I go onto View > Outline so that everything is now in black and white (as only the outlines are showing). By taking the Pen tool I draw little triangles to connect the little boxes to the big box.

After I was done, I flipped back to the normal preview so I have something like this:

I select all of the boxes & triangles and go onto Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Warp. I select the Flag option and make it horizontal, and voila I have my banner!

Conclusion:
This experiment went a lot smoother than I thought it would do, and even though it's simple I could see that there could be ways to develop the banner further into a more complicated design. The tutorial was extremely useful, and I learnt how to distort as well as move shapes accurately using the Move tool (which I never knew about before!)