I was doing some poking around this morning on a site that I love to diddle around on for ideas when I have the time… Minted.com.
Minted offers tons of custom stationery… invites, envelopes, save-the-dates, you name it, they can probably do it. The thing is, that if we’re talking wedding, sure, the invites aren’t all that pricey… $1.85 each for these guys; but then you add another $324 for RSVP cards (this is at an order of 200 pieces) and you’re already up to around $700 ($695 before shipping to be exact). Mind you, we haven’t even factored in the price of postage.
Pish-tosh, you may say, but when it comes to a $10K wedding, $700 is almost one tenth (1/10 = 10%) of your entire budget. I hope I managed to put that in perspective for you. On a shoe-string budget, that’s a lot of dough.
Two alternative options that I’m considering for my invites:
- Etsy, Etsy, Etsy. I dig supporting real artists that do this stuff because they love it… like rasideas, who makes these invites (and more) that are a great, less expensive alternative (I’ll get to why shortly). At $3 for an invitation suite (includes envelope) and an RSVP card, 200 people comes out to $600. Not much better, I know. Just wait, I’ll get to it.
- Flex my own creative muscle. I have one. And it’s a good one. I know my way around Photoshop and Illustrator and am fairly convinced that I’d be able to design my invites myself and have them printed (or even print them myself) for about half the cost. This will end up being another DIY post. I guarantee it.
So, $600 may not be a whole lot better than around $700 for the invites at Minted, but check this out:
- Regular postage on 200 invites and 200 RSVP cards comes out to $176 (for 200 of each)
- Regular postage on 200 invites and 200 RSVP postcards comes out to $144 (for 200 of each, postcards are currently at $0.28)
I’ll keep you posted on my invitation endeavors… another little hint is to not mail out save-the-dates. Most folks will know you’re getting married, and if they don’t, or if they need a reminder, put together a cute email.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree..etsy etsy etsy! Super amazing.
You can also find more “unusual” invitations depending on your theme. We are having a subtle sports theme with ours, so we are using a site that makes “sports cards” to create the Save the Dates and another site that makes invitations that look like sporting event tickets with a perforated RSVP card. ($78 for 100 glossy “event ticket” invitations with envelopes and $75 for 100 the save the dates, though we’ll still have to buy envelopes for the “save the dates” and the RSVP’s)
We bought print your own invitations at Michael’s…they were on sale for $20 a box…so we got 3 boxes for $60
So the only other things we need to pay for are ink and postage!
excellent point! it’s all about priorities. splurging isn’t terrible if it means alot to you and ur mate but where u can go local, go etsy and go frugal!! great post.
I designed our save the dates using pages on my Mac. Afterward I went to vista prints, uploaded my design and had 250 of them printed and shipped for $30! That’s a steal
Watch their website for killer deals…they were offering 100 free post cards at the time but I needed 150 (they only sold them in quantities of 100 or 250) so I had to order more. Still cheap though considering some of my friends have spent $200-$300 on them!
Brilliant!!