Cost Of Wedding Invitations

I have been thinking the same thing. I am going SUPER cheap because all they do is throw them away. I also got a personal website that does the RSVP's on it, so I dont have to spend money on the response cards (which can run about $150 ) Don't forget with response cards you have to address and add postage to that envelope! Also make sure that you do not have to pay extra postage for a bulky or weird shaped card. I had one picked out that was square, I was going to have to pay double poastage to send them (thank goodness the website told me that!) AHH... I say stay simple and let them see how amazing your wedding will be in person and not on paper!

Personally I think a wedding invitation is the dumbest thing to spend a lot of money on, since it will just end up in someone's trash can.

We spent about $150 on ours, now granted my sister is really artistic and made them look REALLY fancy, even though they came from amazon.com. She bought some gold ribbons and translucent paper to decorate them and made them look amazing. I may have said this on another post, but we've gotten a lot of compliments including from a friend that spent $2,000.00 on hers. Now, I feel like for the cheaper invitations you really need an artistic friend or family member to help make them look nicer otherwise they can look cheap.

We saved money also by having people RSVP on our wedding website, except for the older guests and those without computers, we just sent them the traditional RSVP card.

Have you checked out these websites? They have some pretty good deals

http://www.invitations-rsvp.com/

http://www.1st-class-wedding-invitations.com/

Try http://www.theamericanwedding.com/. I was going to use them for my invitations and it was only going to cost me about $200 with shipping. I'm using www.cardsandpockets.com but those are for DIY brides. You order cardstock from there and print them youself. You could always do a 3-layer invitation with black as the back, silver as the middle, and white as the top (what you print on).

You are not wrong for feeling this way, in fact, invitations is one area in the planning where you can control the cost. Invitation prices can vary depending on the bride's taste and the type of package you choose. If you are not comfortable with the price ($356.00) you still have time to shop around. Also, wait to see if that vendor is having a sale on your choice of invite. You can also search the web for an invitation similuar but at a lower price. Hope I was able to help!

Good Luck!

Annette

Me and FH have been wondering the same thing we are only having a small wedding 50-60 people nothing big since it is a nighttime cocktail party and kid free. We have looked around so much but it looks as if we would be paying for 100 invites and we really only need about 30 since everyone basically is in a couple. We are going to go the diy option to keep costs low id rather spend more on food then invites since people will remember that more. We are also going to do postcard RSVPs so that it will cut down on cost of envelopes and people will remember to do them.

If you're willing to put in the time & effort... I went to "Michaels" and bought a basic embossing kit & some special shaped hole punch tools. I went to "Office Max" to buy card stock with the crease in the middle. I then got some hearts and flower designs from Yahoo and used a high quality printer and made my own. Total cost for 150 was about $100. You have to be willing to put in the work and effort to make them look nice, but it's very possible. BTW: I made my own cake too... took me two days and no one knew it wasn't a special designed cake. I'll put a picture of them on my storefront tomorrow.

Stationery should run about 6% of your wedding budget, so that may help to keep things in perspective. Your invitations are the announcement and first glimpse people get of you day, so you want them to be special, but they do not have to break your bank.

Here are a few tips:

A great way to cut the cost on stationery is to keep it simple! Get a nice simple card stock to fit your color scheme and an ink color.

To add a print or a finishing color of some sort: Select a scrap booking paper to band it with or a ribbon or fabric you love to know around it.

Monogram: Custom stamps are all over place and for about $45 you can have one made with your monogram. The best part: buy matching black cardstock notecards and stamp them as well for your thank you notes! No printing needed saves some additional money.

Online rsvp:

Make sure your guest list is web savvy. Expect more last minute 'yes.' Be prepared to add catering $ later for late rsvp's or a wider margin of error.

Stationery should run about 6% of your wedding budget, so that may help to keep things in perspective. Your invitations are the announcement and first glimpse people get of you day, so you want them to be special, but they do not have to break your bank.

Here are a few tips:

A great way to cut the cost on stationery is to keep it simple! Get a nice simple card stock to fit your color scheme and an ink color.

To add a print or a finishing color of some sort: Select a scrap booking paper to band it with or a ribbon or fabric you love to know around it.

Monogram: Custom stamps are all over place and for about $45 you can have one made with your monogram. The best part: buy matching black cardstock notecards and stamp them as well for your thank you notes! No printing needed saves some additional money.

Online rsvp:

Make sure your guest list is web savvy. Expect more last minute 'yes.' Be prepared to add catering $ later for late rsvp's or a wider margin of error.

Cheers!

I'm doing the invites as postcards at vistaprint.com and they're giving me 100 free! (and my FH will get another 100 free, and my FMIL will order 100 of the response cards free, and my mother will order another 100 response cards free....) And the grand total will be something like $36! I just did that with my save the dates and they came out beautifully. Plus, by doing them as a postcard, I get to pay for postcard stamps (which are only $.28) so it works out really well.

I totally agree with you about not wanting to spend money on something that just gets thrown away, so I was ECSTATIC to find this deal. Good luck!

If you do order them make sure you get plenty! I made the mistake of cutting myself short because they were so pricey. When I ordered mine, I paid $340 for 100 invitations...then later realized we needed about 25 more so when I went back to order more I ended up paying $220 just for 25 invitations! If it wasn't for all the good compliments I received on the invitations I'd be losing lots of sleep over how much I ended up spending

I designed my own and they're coming out to around 50 bucks for everything.. but we're very casual so it's not a pocket invite

One way to try to cut the cost is to look for paper supply places that only sell in paper things for such events. Look for something you like and get a few samples and if you don't have a good black printer then if a family member does and print them. You can design yours on any type of program that is sold with a computer. If you need to print them some place how about just having a single sheet printed and cut to size you want and add a couple of holes and ribbon and done. ..

I think it sets the mood of the wedding. If you are having a casual fun wedding then DIY and make them match your personality. If it is going to be very elegant or traditional I would want to have really nice professional ones. We are getting our invitations (custom printed scrolls), return address printed envelopes, seal stickers, thank you cards & envelopes, and a few other things fitting our theme for $250. This is for 50, we only really need about 35 so their minimum works for us. $356 does sound like an awful lot for only invites and response cards so I would keep shopping to find a better deal.

We are using simple Wilson invites printed on our computer. We found them on Ebay. 150 invites, envelopes, reply cards & reply card envelopes for $39.00. We have a very limited budget and would prefer to spend the money elsewhere.

I have seen hand-made invites sell for as low as $3.00 per. I think you should shop around, avoid the big generic companies - look locally!

We are ordering out Invitations from Ann's Bridal Bargains, www.annsbridalbargains.com . To keep the invitations simple and cost effective for us, we are ordering the Seal-n-Send invitations. Each Seal-n-Send Invitation includes a perforated card at the bottom printed with our response wording on one side and our address on the other. So our guest can just tear the response card from the invitation and send it back in the form of a post card. The design we are ordering is 100 invitations for $88. Their designs are very nice.

We went to Party City. I never realized they had books of stationary for weddings and formal affairs. You have to ask someone to see them, they don't have them out in the aisles. We ordered basic, elegant invites that included response cards and envelopes. For 100 invitations it cost about $230. Not the cheapest but I felt better being able to see and touch the stationary in the store as opposed to using an online vendor. The quality of the paper was as good as any stationary store we looked at and the price was about 1/2.

It really depends on what you want to spend your money on. This area might just not be that important, which is fine because everything can't be impt and first class expensive, unless you are a billionaire. Eh, do what you need to do for you to make yourself happy because obviously you can't please everyone and critical unsupportive ppl will ALWAYS find something to criticize or complain about...so for me, I'll just smile and just move on and be happy with my life.

Given that, I felt like I ended up spending too much on my invitations, but I am a bit more lazy, uncreative, and the invitations were impt to me because it was one of the few areas I had complete control over.

I am a DIY bride so I bought mines from A.C. Moore, and I spent a total of $80 on "2" packages....I have recv'd so many compliments on the invites...I didnt feel the need to spend all that money on invites cause not only do you have to buy the invites you have to pay for the stamps to mail them out and stamps for the response cards, and mind you, if your invites have bows on them like mines did the charges for that.. I pd a total of $1.08 just to mail them, so times that times !00 plus ppl, that alot of money

I did wedding paper divas and spent $290 on 100 invites, RSVP cards, 110 envelopes for the invites and RSVPs and this also included the $20 color customization fee. I like the way they turned out. They were on sale and they had a special for free shipping so I saved like $70. They aren't the heaviest cardstock in the world but they came out really nice and the staff there was awesome.