Invitations

A lot of people have debated over when to send out invitations. Some people say to send save the date cards as much as a year and advance and send out invitations around 8 weeks in advance. Other people have suggested skipping the save the date cards and just send out invitations 4-6 months in advance.

I personally prefer the second option and here's why: You save on postage. Yes, tacky, I know, postage stamps should not be on the top of my list of concerns. Really, though, if you are inviting a lot of people-- whether anywhere near all of them come or not-- it can get costly. Next, you save on envelopes and paper (the save the date cards themselves.) If you are not as concerned about saving the money, how about you use the money on the invitations themselves? Saving $100-200 on save the date cards can give you more freedom to buy nicer invitations. I, for one, would prefer nicer invitations.

I want to design my own invitations and put them together myself. Once again, going for more cost efficient. Yeah, I am willing to put in the extra effort to get EXACTLY what I want, and for a good price too! A typical wedding invitation's price can range anywhere from $1.50-$6.50. That's insane! Definitely a good reason to go for non-commercially made. I've already got some ideas of what I would like, now I just need to go over the ideas with my man. I AM including him in the wedding process, after all!

Here is what I want to start with for invitations. This, is a pocket fold invitation. Well, not the invitation itself, but what you put the invitation ON. When you first take it out of the envelope it is delivered in, it is a quaint little, well kinda a smaller envelope! You open that up and there printed right in the middle is a page attached to it that has the invitation itself on it. The basics invitation details/information-- who's giving the bride away, the names of the happy couple, the date, etc. Underneath the invitation part of the envelope is a smaller little pocket for you to put additional details in, such as the location of the wedding (address, city, state, name of location), RSVP card, and whatever else you can think of!

The site that I found this at, you can get 25 of these pocket fold invitation holder thingies for 20 bucks! That is a lot cheaper than what a wedding invitation would normally cost, that's for sure! Admittedly, you still need to pay for the invitation to put into the holder, but it can be a lot simpler now that you've got this; simple enough to make yourself.

This, my dears, is card stock. That's right, something you can buy in an office supply store. If you think about it, that's most of what a wedding invitation is made out of! That and some fancy text and maybe a design or two around the border. What it comes down to, though, is the paper. Paper is pretty cheap, even card stock paper. You can buy a huge amount of card stock for pretty cheap and add your own fancy writing to it for little to nothing. All you need to do is go to your local UPS store to get it all printed for you, and there you have an invitation. It may not be spectacular, so maybe add some ribbons to it or even do a photo invitation, but you don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on invitations to get something you like.

Really, you don't need to spend a lot to get great invitations. The fact of the matter is, the invitations aren't what make the wedding special, so you don't need to worry about them too much, and you certainly don't need to waste a bunch of your budget on something that most people will throw away after the wedding anyway. Find something nice, spend a reasonable amount on it, and be done with it and move on to the rest of your wedding planning!

Ooooor, if you don't want to make your own invites, ignore this entire post. If you have the funds and resources to buy pre-made invitations, go for it. If you don't have the time or energy to make your own, then by all means, do what you have time to do. If you want to make your own but can't (for lack of time or creative skills), then maybe have a friend design it for you!

Anyway, I hope this post was useful for the few of you that actually read this.
Until next time.