Determining your wedding budget can be one of the most stressful parts of planning your wedding. And wedding invitations take up a significant portion of your budget, so you’ll want to plan smart. Here are some of the top questions brides ask about wedding invitations and my advice for getting the most mileage out of them!
Jean M
Q: I’ve been looking at ways to save invitation costs. Can I forego sending invitations to my friends and neighbors and just spread the news word-of-mouth, and only mail invitations to people out of town?
A: Everyone on your guest list should receive an invitation — even the parents, grandparents and siblings of the bridal couple, as well as the officiant to the ceremony. Doing so will ensure that everyone has the same information about your wedding at hand, and that no one feels left out of your event. You’d hate to assume that your aunt knew she was invited to your wedding, but that she felt she couldn’t attend because she didn’t receive an invitation in the mail. Also, you’ll be able to include response cards in your invitations that guests fill out with their reply and return to you, helping you with an accurate guest count. This will save you money in the long run by not having to guess at your final guest count and ordering too much food and beverage.
Q: We have been thinking about making our own invitations with our home computer and laser printer in order to cut down on the invitation budget. Do you have any tips?
A: If you are artistically inclined and are aware of the time and costs involved in making your invitations from scratch, creating your own invitations is a special way to introduce your wedding. However, it’s a myth that making your own invitations will be less expensive than having them professionally printed. After the purchase of the paper, all components (layers, ribbons, inks, embossers, hole punches), ink cartridges and envelopes, you won’t have saved much at all. And that isn’t even counting the relative cost of the time it will take you to print and assemble each one. Overall, wedding invitations made on home computers and printers can have visible color inconsistencies, smeared ink and less crisp and beautiful results. Professional printers can offer consistently beautiful results and offer you more options with raised lettering, a wide variety of lettering styles and ink colors for printing. Plus, there’s the ease of letting the professionals take care of printing your wedding invitations while you focus on other wedding details!
Q. How do you decide how many invitations to send?
A. This answer will come as a relief: not every single guest has to get his or her own invitation! One wedding invitation can be sent per family, per couple and per single person including a guest. For example, if you’re inviting 300 people to your wedding, you may only need to order 200 invitations. Double-check your guest list and count by families and couples to determine your final invitation count. And don’t forget to order 25 extra invitations to have on hand for last-minute guest list additions and for keepsakes. It’s far less expensive to include 25 additional invitations in your original order than to place a new order of 25 invitations.
