You're - Almost - Invited!

Our wedding invitations were created entirely by me. Now I realize I have a slight advantage to this because I am a graphic design major. But, you would be surprised at how much money you can save by doing them yourself. Even more if you have someone willing to help you address them. Now when you order invitations through a printing company you get a volume discount (similar to if you are getting t-shirts made, they have to make the stencil no matter what and the more you print the less per item it costs), but even with the discount it can quickly chew up your "budget."


Every newly engaged bride signs up for those magazines, the ones with all the groomsmen & bridesmaid gifts, parents' gifts, and of course invitations. However, think about your invitations, your guest list, those little touches I told you about the other day. They make an impression. For our wedding, due to our ceremony location we had guest count restraints. Our location could only hold 250 people, maximum. So we decided to have a private ceremony with just close family and such and then have a big party for the reception. Sounds like a good idea right? Well, sort of. See, if we were to order our invitations we would have to pay for two separate designs just because we wanted to change a few words. Also if you remember from the other day, we wanted to avoid white & black, so we were pretty set on ivory/off white invitations, which of course cost more. Not to mention the envelopes, response, and reception cards. And we had a rather large wedding, sending out approximately 275 invitations, maybe even 300 after parents' lists were in.

So I decided first that I wanted to design my own. I used a graphic design program, InDesign, to design my invitations, but you can get pretty creative with Word these days. I've also known people to whip out some pretty fancy stuff with Photoshop. Use a familiar item, we used butterflies and that "K" that is in all our pictures, to create uniformity. I created one outside file and two inside files: one for reception-only guests and one for ceremony and reception guests. It is very important that you proofread your invitations! (As with all your document stuff...) Once they have been proofread print a test one on regular paper, so you can figure out how your printer feeds paper and whether you need to flip the paper a certain direction. For instance, I needed to know which side of the folded invitation came out on which half. It's sounds simple but not doing this simple step can cause a lot of grief later on.

So, once you've established that, its bombs away. Your local office supply store carries lots of crazy paper styles, remember to get card stock (or at least thicker paper) for your invitations you want them to hold up in the USPS. Now, according to this site (one of those fancy magazine sites), in order for us to get the minimum amount of our invitations and other stationery (which were bright white with bright white envelopes, unfolded, nothing real fancy about them) it would be well over $450. However, we got three reams of card stock for about $40. Then with ink replacement (I have one of those decent printers that doesn't take much ink, but has six different cartridges) I think we spent about $150 total. That's with the different inside wording. And it was on the ivory card stock that we wanted. Then to top it off we got ivory colored envelopes from our local office supply store, about $35 extra for three boxes of a hundred. AND we were smart about the envelopes, because honestly who wants to lick 300 envelopes? So we got peel-n-seal envelopes, and put our best man to work! 

Now remember to take advantage of multiple copies per page. For our invitations we could print two per page, which meant less than 2/3 of a ream of paper for all our invitations. We could do six of our response cards per page, and six of our reception cards per page. $avings tip: While we did catch a little flack from it, you do NOT have to put postage on your response cards, or include envelopes. So, you will be able to have plenty of extra paper as long as you are economical with your printing. Also make sure you don't print 250 copies (or whatever number) all at once, you don't want to get those lines through your wedding invitations. Pay attention when printing. It may seem wasteful but its better to replace your ink before its completely gone to prevent any from printing that way.

Should you decide you don't like the idea of folding/trimming to fit in the envelopes, which can be a pain, you can get a pretty decent DIY kit at any store that sells wedding supplies. Some come with the extra stationery for the response/reception cards and others come with envelopes. However, for these sets they typically run about 20 bucks a piece (with all the pieces) or as much as $40. So depending on your guest list that's still over a hundred for just the paper. Not including ink.

Or should you decide that you want to design your own stationery but don't want to use all your ink, as some will decide, you can upload your designs and have them printed from a store. Our local office supply store offers this but they don't include the price of envelopes, while others include shipping on top of printing costs. However, this can be a pricier option if you choose to go color (as most people do). However, I know that Kinko's is pretty cheap for black ink only.

We hadn't ordered any of our engagement pictures by the time we decided to send out our wedding invitations so to save money, and ink, we used Vistaprint and printed out postcards that doubled as save-the-dates, with our picture on there, since our name wasn't super prominent on the invitation. They worked wonderfully. And it really wasn't all that expensive. I ordered envelopes to go with them, unsure of how they would fit, but they slid right into our ivory ones. The FULL COLOR postcards, all 500 of them (we got LOTS of extras), only cost 24.94 plus shipping. So while we spent a decent amount, it wasn't nearly the $450+ that would would have with that other site. $avings Tip: Check online or on that site for new sign-up deals, occasionally you can get free postcards, or other freebies! Coupon codes = $avings!

Other things you may want to consider to liven up your invitations:
-Customized Postage
-Wax Seals
-Sticker Seals


What else can you think of?

See you next time for more Wedding On The Cheap! Happy Planning!