Wedding Budget Hacks: Invitations
So, news: I am engaged!  We’d beed talking about getting married for a while, then took an impromptu vacation to Orlando for Disney and Universal and he proposed in front of Hogwarts with a Harry Potter ring.  It was great.
We both want a small, low-stress wedding to whatever extent that is possible. Â The wedding is going to be on October 14 of this year, which is pretty much exactly ten weeks from when he proposed.
Amazingly, we’ve already done a fair amount of the planning - we’ve set a date, found a ceremony venue (just need to submit paperwork with the local parks department), found a reception venue (just need to make a deposit to officially lock in the date, and that’s happening this week), figured out the menu, set up a website, checked in with friends we want in the wedding party, etc.  We’re shooting for about 40 people, which is ridiculously small for a wedding which makes it easier to book a local restaurant rather than a Wedding Venue which would cost probably twice as much per person.
One thing I stumbled upon by chance that I want to make sure everyone else who is planning a wedding on a budget knows about is that you can buy wedding invitation kits from Michael’s (and probably a bunch of other craft stores).
The specific kit that I bought contains 30 invitation cards, 30 envelopes, 30 RSVP cards, 30 envelopes for those, and some ribbons and tags that I’m honestly not sure what they’re intended for but will find a use for them.  The kit was originally marked at $39.99, but I got it on clearance for $11.99.  It was on clearance because the invitations in the box didn’t match the ones shown on the box (which I knew before buying it, so that’s fine).  That means I have the wrong item number, but if I had the right item number I could use that website to type out the invitations and print them pretty.  I could probably google it if I really wanted, but since I only need to create like 25 of them I just bought a calligraphy pen for five bucks and wrote them by hand and they look pretty.
Since basically nobody these days actually uses RSVP cards if you can RSVP online, I’m not actually putting the cards intended as RSVP cards in with the invitations when I mail them.  Instead, I’ll use them to create name cards for table settings at the reception so I don’t have to buy more stationary for that later.  I’m also going to figure out a pretty and unobtrusive way for the cards to communicate meal choice and food allergies so that waiters are aware of those.
If you order invitations from a place like Shutterfly, you will definitely spend more than $1.00 per invitation (and you spend more if you buy fewer invitations), which can add up fast. Â Instead, I spent about 40 cents per invitation.
-E
