Invitation Know How

I did what a lot of brides aspire to do, but ultimately…don’t. Whether it’s because they don’t have the time, fear they don’t have the creativity, or whatever reasons, a lot of brides, I’ve found would love to make their own invitations but ultimately…don’t. But I did. It’s probably the proudest project of my entire wedding planning experience, mostly because so many people raved about them.

I made my own invitations. I glued, tied ribbons, printed, and the best part? I designed them all in MS Word. I didn’t have fancy pictures/graphics on mine, that’s not really my style. Simple, elegance was all I wanted and well, I downloaded a few new fonts, and wham bam thank you ma’am. Everything got printed from MS Word.

To me they came out perfectly. Ultimately, the entire project start to finish (once we got started) didn’t take us too long. The hardest part was cutting the polka dotted paper, the envelope liners, lining the envelopes, gluing things together, making sure things were straight and unfortunately because Hubs and I sometimes aren’t the most coordinated of people, making sure glue doesn’t get all over the place. Ok so that’s a lot of work, I often think it was easier than it was, but it was a lot of fun.

Check out below for the pictures and for the cost breakdown (which is really a rough estimate just so y’all know)

I got hubs to work! Cutting the envelope liners…

The invitation….

and finally…

All of it before the packaging… and then… ta-da!!!

The final product.

We made about 90 invitations, if I remember clearly. May have been more. No more than 100 though.

reply envelopes – $31.50
paper for envelope liners – $30
A7 envelopes – $40.50
A7 cards – $20
scalloped edged cards for the invitations: $20
reply cards – $15
reception/hotel info cards – $30
sheets for background – $25
ribbon – $10
glue – $5
stamps – $80

total cost of supplies: $310 (rough estimate)
total cost per invitation out of say 95 (since i can’t remember exact numbers): ~$3.25 (again rough estimate)

I probably could have done better at saving money  – I got all my supplies at Paper Source – they were incredibly helpful when I needed suggestions, but you pay a premium for going there. Paper goods were definitely a little more pricey than I should have paid. But I didn’t do my research as I should have.

If you’re going to do your own invitations I recommend:

1. Knowing what you want.
2. Understanding all the supplies you will need
3. Estimating ahead of time how long it will take you
4. Estimating costs and research less expensive options
5. Doing research – figure out what you like, what you don’t like, look at what other people used to make their invitations (not gonna lie, weddingbee was my savior when I was doing this). Also, Etsy is a blessing – if you want something designed but you’re not a designer and still want to do it yourself, Etsy has a number of fabulous designers willing to design invitations for you to print out yourself, you’ve just gotta do your research!

Tagged as: DIY, invitations, stamford bloggette