Alternatives to a Calligrapher?

The most budget-friendly way? To hand-write them yourself. Buy some calligraphy pens and practice a bit first if you want it to look nicer than your standard handwriting.

I don't know how many invitations you are sending out but I did not want to spend a lot on a calligrapher either and I did not want to address my invites myself. I found a girl on Etsy who charges $1.25 per envelope which was the cheapest I could find. Her shop is Graceintheburrow. I think she added a new style which is a calligraphy pen which is cheaper than her calligraphy services. Otherwise, I agree with @Jessi

If I can get my printer to work- I am printing right onto the envelope. Not traditional, but I think it looks better than labels.

I second the hand-write them yourself. I bought a calligraphy pen from Michaels that was very inexpensive, and began my search for some calligraphy advice. Stumbled on The Postman's Knock which has been a lifesaver. She has free templates to teach you some easy, but still classic, calligraphy. https://thepostmansknock.com/

She also has what she calls Learn Calligraphy for a Latte, which are fully explained lessons for only $5, including how to do the different strokes.

She ALSO teaches faux calligraphy if the thought of dip pens is too daunting.

@dancingbearbride can you share the etsy person you used? I'm on the hunt for a calligrapher.

I want my envelopes to be presentable, but I'm not paying for calligraphy. That money can go towards a night on our honeymoon. I picked my fav calligraphy font and printed our address on our sample envelope and it worked really well. We also got a return address stamp from Etsy with silver metallic ink in the same font, it looks nice and well put together.

Do it yourself! I downloaded a few practice sets from The Postman's Knock -- you get a PDF to print out with lots of practice sheets. I ended up doing the names in a cool calligraphy style font, with calligraphy markers, and then the address was all block letters. It looked really nice and clean, and I got lots of compliments!

Thanks ladies I love the advice. I love the calligraphy pen idea, but sadly my handwriting is really quite terrible and given it's crunch time I'm afraid I would mess up a whole bunch.

I'm ordering the envelopes with the return address on them, so I'm wondering how that would work with Etsy... Do I mail them my envelopes? @dancingbear bride & @Kristen, how long did your Etsy girl take to complete yours? At this point, if printing with a regular ink printer saves me $150 I will definitely do it. I just have heard sometimes the envelopes get caught in the machine?

@Dancingbearbride I don't (think) I have seen Wrap around labels. Can you let me know where I can search those?

I'm probably going to try this!

http://www.thelettermate.com/

I'm on a budget and my handwriting is horrible. I'm printing labels. I was going back and forth about it but I'm at the don't sweat the small stuff stage of wedding planning.

As far as the envelopes getting caught, I had no issues. You'll have to order extra envelopes either way, you can always practice on one and see if it's doable. If not, you can shell out the money for calligraphy.

So glad you posted this. I'm checking out thelettermate.com and The Postman's Knock now. Thanks, ladies!

My MOH's mom had beautiful handwriting (not calligraphy, but beautiful). I paid her to address our invitations. Don't you know anyone with better handwriting?

I printed mine in my printer at home. I wasn't worried about them looking official or formal. My wedding wasn't formal.

Honestly, if your wedding isn't a formal black tie affair, you can skip calligraphy on your invites.

Have you bought envelopes yet? Minted does free address and return address printing if you buy envelopes from them, you just have to have to upload your addresses as a spreadsheet using either their template, or a microsoft excel csv file. They've got a lot of really pretty addressing styles to choose from.

I'm using invitations from minted.com. They do "TO" addressing free. My invites are costing about $250. I got a $50 credit when I did a website with them. They always have specials going on.

If you're not opposed to hand writing them, you can print very lightly (think a light gray on a white envelope), in a nice script/calligraphy font, then trace it to give it the same feel as if you'd had a calligrapher do it.

It's still typically considered "proper" to handwrite/address your invites, rather than having them printed.

I hand wrote mine as the alternative to paying someone or doing labels.

I got a creative handwriting/calligraphy book for Christmas and in the short 2 weeks I have been practicing, I am surprisingly really darn good at it already. I get excited to practice and am kind of obsessed with handwriting now! I think with a few more month's practice, I will be all set to handwrite my own and maybe even open up a shop for it. I understand if you think you don't have great handwriting ability though. You can print the addresses on clear address labels or else straight onto the envelopes from your printer.

Find a friend who has good handwriting. No one is going to care as long as they don't look god awful