Another money saving tip for wedding planning: Invites

Invitations are another place the cost can quickly escalate far beyond what you expected.

To keep the cost down we've taken a few steps that I thought were easy enough to do yourself, and good to share.

Save the Date Cards:
I found an online design that I fell in love with. A good friend of mine does graphic design, so I asked her if she could help me put together a similar design and print it. I could have just printed them myself on photo paper or card stock after the design was finished, but since she had access to printers at work and work was slow, she helped a sista out.

Invitations:
Again, I found a design I liked online and rather than order them off Etsy for $38 per set of 5 invites (for a total of around $500 to do 65 invites), asked the same friend to help me put a design together that was similar. I feel the need to say that 1) my invite design is much different than the one that inspired me, so theres no IP infringement and 2) had budget not been an issue, I would have gone for the Etsy invites.

After that, we headed to Paper Source in Porter Square (Cambridge, MA) to look at the different types of paper and the different colors available. I used to live walking distance from Paper Source, and I've always LOVED them. But after this experience, I love them even more.

We decided on a dark blue trifold outer and antique gold backing to fit behind an off-white printed invite. The response cards are going to be the same off white (no backing) as the invite, and the envelopes are the same antique gold as the backing. I will punch out stars to "seal" the trifold closed, and purchased white gel pens to address the envelopes.

I needed to order some stuff from home and have it shipped here in NC since it wasn't in store, and one of the ladies at Paper Source told me that if I called one of their stores directly and placed the order through them, that shipping was free. I initially wasn't going to bother and just order on the web until I realized I saved myself in the neighborhood of $30 by calling them.

I also skipped on the inner envelope. While it is creating some interesting invite addressing woes, it was a savings of at least $30, not including the extra postage that an odd-shaped envelope would require.

The total cost for all my paper goods to make 65 invites was $150, and manpower to put it all together.

Now that I have the design, I could pay $65 for printing, or I could print it myself on my super photo printer. As long as it doesn't smudge and the card stock can go through your printer without looking funny, it should be ok. Then once it is printed, all that's left is gluing the invites together and mailing them out.

Even with paying $65 for the printing, I'm still saving over $300 on my invites based on that initial price of the similar Etsy invite.