We stood at Michael’s, in their “cards and paper” section, staring blankly at a wall of different colored cardstock. Some packages were square, some rectangle, some circle; all way beyond our expertise and comprehension.
“So, once we choose the paper.. then what?” J asks, hands in his pockets with the “look, don’t touch” attitude that men tend to get in crafting stores. I shrug. “I guess, try to make a template? With Word, or Publisher or something?”
I would maybe have titled this post “how we made 100 wedding invitations for under $60″, but to be frank, I had very little help with respect to the invitations, so I was stuck with the majority of the work.
As we often do when it comes to wedding decisions, we became frustrated with our lack of knowledge and left the store empty handed.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do for wedding invitations, but I did know that I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on something that guests will read and eventually throw away.
Saving Money on Wedding Invitations
As soon as I set my Facebook status to “engaged”, Facebook started displaying ads on my newsfeed for wedding invitation designers, florists, photographers and caterers. Clicking on one of the invitation ads, I noted just how expensive wedding invitations can be. Those little pieces of paper can end up costing hundreds of dollars!
It’s not only the invitations themselves that cost money, it’s the postage, extras on the invitations (bows, decals), and design of the invitations.
We weren’t sold that this was something that needed to be spent heavily on, so we decided that we wanted to make our own. Except obviously, we didn’t know how.
Free Printable Templates
When I got home the day of the great Michael’s fail, I began searching the internet for free wedding invitation printable templates. At first, I came up mostly empty handed with a few amateur printables that just looked like a Word template. After scouring for a couple of hours, I ended up with a handful of templates that were free and really quite cute that matched the theme of our wedding.
I found one that specified the size of paper we needed to make it work, and was sold. We used the template in the photo above from Wedding Chicks.
We played around with the wording a bit, populated the areas that needed populating, and set out for paper.
Invitation Paper
This part was surprisingly easy. I looked up the paper size I required on Ebay and then also on discount paper sites, but wasn’t finding any eye-catching deals. On my way home from work one day I decided to swing by staples to see whether they had any card stock in the appropriate colour, that I could potentially cut down.
At Staples, I found a invitation package with the appropriate sized envelopes and all of the invitations cut down to the perfect size. It was $29.99 for 100 invitations, so I was sold.
RSVP Card Paper
I didn’t want guests mailing back their RSVPs because I knew I would have a hard time keeping track of paper, and it’s also not 1972. We decided that we were going to have electronic RSVPing only (or, in my grandmother’s case, I would just phone her). This, by default, saved us money because we didn’t have to get return envelopes and pay for more postage because of a heavier envelope.
We went to Michaels and actually bought paper this time. We bought a 25 sheet package for $4.99 of an accent colour to the invitations. The RSVP cards are smaller than the invitations, so we used the paper cutter to cut them down in 4 sections.
Printing the Invitations
Our invitations just looked better with black ink, since we were using an ivory and kraft paper to go with the rustic theme of our wedding. Printing was therefore quite easy.
I bought a brand new black cartridge for $19.99 and used our printer at home for the printing.
If you’re doing this at home, please test it out first! Grab a few looseleaf pieces of paper and print both the card template and the RSVP templates as a test a few times. You don’t want to waste the invitation paper. Sizing, orientation and colour defects aren’t rare with home printers.
I sat with the printer and checked every second or third invitation to ensure it was printing properly.
Decals and Extras
Again, to go with the theme of our wedding, it was pretty easy to add extras. We used twine (much like the invitation in the template photo) and tied a bow. Twine is cheap and trendy right now, so we saved a lot there. It cost us $4.99 for a huge roll of it, which we will be using for other wedding decorations.
You can do the same with ribbon (watch a Youtube video on how to tie a bow properly).
My friends made wedding invitations using a stamp that said “handmade with love” as a little extra.
So there you have it. We made 100 wedding invitations for under $60 including printer ink, saving us a ton of money on wedding invitations.
Did you have a designer print wedding invitations for you, or did you go the homemade route?
We hand made ours too! I managed a print shop during university, so I always knew I’d be making my invites my hand. Ours were postcard-sized ivory linen paper mounted on black linen cards rock and we found matching envelopes for cheap that fit perfectly. We did electronic rsvp’s as well (couldn’t stomach the idea of pre-paying all that return postage) and bought a beautiful rubber stamp of a tree and gold ink to add a flair to the invites (and used it for all our handmade paper wedding goods – menus, programs, thank yous). So much better than spending hundreds!
Great post! I am still debating what I want to do. I have been looking around and I’m not a fan of most premade designs, but I have been liking the templates online.
We originally went online and designed our wedding invites. But for some strange reason, the company didn’t offer an envelope for the invite. It was oddly shaped but you would think they would include an envelope! Anyways, we moved on to Michael’s where we found a nice set of invitations for a really good price. We then got out those lovely 50% off coupons and we each bought a box and then went back and bought 2 more. Our total cost was around $80. When it came to invites, we realized that in 10 years, no one is going to say, “do you remember that awesome wedding invite from so and so?” We would rather have them say, “do you remember that awesome party we went to celebrate so and so’s wedding?”
I had such a hard time with the handmade. I found an awesome template, but for some reason the alignment etc on my printer wasn’t agreeing with me. Therefore I had to buy more ink. I’d totally just order them if I ever had to do something similar again. That being said, I’m glad it turned out well for you! (We did RSVP cards as a lot of the people on his side of the list don’t have the internet. In 2014.)
That’s so awesome! Save your money for the big stuff 🙂
Awesome! I think I’m going to throw my wife a big anniversary party, but definitely do it on the cheap. I will be making the invitations this way, because I remember our announcements costs something absurd like $400, but my FIL was insistent they be sent out.
Handmade invitations are definitely a money saver, and with today’s software, they look almost as good.
I am glad I am not in the printing business, they must have taken a huge hit financially when all of the technology started to improve.
Good job with the invitations. I worked for a year at a company that would organized weddings (and provide everything for them) and was shocked to see how much they charge and how many people cannot be bothered to use their brains and do some basic math 😀
Instead of getting ripped off, you managed to solve your problem and save money. Nice job 😉
Right on! I think spending big money on invitations is silly (I’d much rather spend the money on food or a veil). DIY all the way!
When my husband proposed he wrote me a letter with a puzzle piece at the bottom saying I was “the final piece he needed to complete his life”. When I opened the puzzle box, my ring was in it! It was very sweet, so we carried that theme through to our invitations and we had our invites turned into puzzles. they came in individual boxes and we printed labels and tied with raffia. They were still about $200 but they were PERFECT!
It’s crazy how much people will spend on the invitations and they end up being thrown away. I don’t know anyone except for the bride or maybe the mother of the bride I’m guessing, who would keep the wedding invitation. Every wedding invitation I’ve received, I’ve thrown out after the wedding.
For my sister’s bridal shower, I used to website Zazzle.com to pick out a design for her invitation. It ended up being $73.67 for about 60 invites (including the envelopes), which wasn’t too bad.
Congratulations, that’s a good price. That template is cute! I made our invites and a few extra pieces of scrapbooking paper here and there really add up! I think I spent more like $120, with some leftovers, for probably 125 or so invites.
I was having a hard time finding the right wedding card for us. With these tips on wedding cards, I’m thinking of creating my personalised wedding invitation. This is by far the best post on“wedding cards” I have read. It helped me a lot, making things simpler and affordable for me.