HERE’S HOW TO GET STUNNING WEDDING INVITATIONS FOR LESS

You want everything about your wedding to be perfect, from the dress of your dreams to stunning wedding invitations. Whether you’re choosing from a selection of professional invitations or designing and printing your own, designing stunning wedding invitations is as simple as knowing what you want to say, choosing the perfect font, and finding the theme that perfectly suits you and your future spouse. It’s your big day. Make a statement to everyone, starting with your invitations.

With the ever-growing cost of modern weddings, many couples have started exploring alternative and cheaper options for their wedding invitations. The invitation to your wedding is very important—it sets the tone and style for the entire event—but this does not mean that it has to be expensive. In addition to printing your own invitations from a custom design, handmade wedding invitation and hand-delivered wedding invitations are starting to become increasingly popular. Let’s explore a few different ways that you can help to keep the cost of your wedding invitations down.

Printing Invitations from a Custom Design

Today’s average household printer can print on cardstock at a high enough quality to be perfectly acceptable for any wedding invitation. Because of this, it has become very popular for graphic designers to sell custom wedding invitations in a PDF format. You select the style for your design, provide the designer with all the information they need to create it—such as the names of the bride and groom, the names of their parents, the date of the wedding, and the location—and the designer will create your custom wedding invitation, which they will email to you as a high-quality PDF.

Once you have the PDF, you just have to purchase white, heavy-weight cardstock, and enough printer ink to print all of the invitations. Depending on the look you are going for, you can buy cardstock with a matte finish or a glossy finish. You can even photo paper if you want an extremely professional look. For a more vintage look, you can also buy light beige-colored cardstock, which will create an old-fashioned look to the ink once the invitation is printed.

The prices for custom PDF designs vary, but they can easily be found for less than fifty dollars—and you can print as many copies of it as you need. The only expenses you will have for this style of invitations are for the PDF design, the paper, and the printer ink. With careful planning, the total for these can be kept under one hundred dollars for all of your wedding invitations. This price can be reduced even farther if you or someone you know is capable of designing the invitations.

Handmade Wedding Invitations

Not only does hand-making your wedding invitations help to keep the cost low, but it also makes them incredibly personal. With this option, less is usually more—meaning that it is best to keep the invitations simple in order to keep time a costs low. Supplies such as white paper doylies, cloth ribbon in your wedding colors, cloth flowers, and tracing stencils can all be found at your local craft store. Handmade wedding invitations offer the additional advantage of being able to personalize them for each person you send them to.

There are hundreds of different ways that you can create handmade wedding invitations. The important thing is to be creative and to make sure that they reflect your personality. Here are a few ideas to start your creative process:

Instead of handwriting all the invitations, print out a regular computer paper all of the information that your guests need to know.

• Glue this onto a larger piece of colored cardstock to give the text a bright boarder.
• The cardstock can also be decorated with lacy doilies before gluing the information onto it.
• Use stencils to monogram the bride and groom’s initials at the top of each wedding invitation.
• Glue a cloth flower or tie a bow with the ribbon in the top corner to accent the invitation.

There are a few things to watch out for when making handmade invitations, especially if you are planning on mailing them. Make sure that they are sized to fit inside of a standard-sized envelope. Having to send them in an off-sized envelope will increase the price of the postage. On that same note, make sure that you are not adding too many extra items to the invitation. If the weight of each envelope is too high, you will be charged additional postage as well.

Postcard Invitations

Especially popular with vintage-themed weddings, postcard invitations are making a comeback. The postage is very cost-effective and you do not have to pay for envelopes. It is also very easy to have a postcard invitation custom designed so that you can print them on your own printer. If you plan to hand-make you invitations, make sure you are keeping them light and thin. You cannot mail a postcard with things like ribbons and flowers sticking off of it.

With postcard invitations, it is very important that you ask for your invitations to be hand-canceled at the post office. When a postcard in run through their cancelation machine, a dark line will be printed over the bottom of the design to show that the stamp has been canceled. It is also possible for the corners of the postcard to get caught and torn inside of the machine. Hand-canceling your invitations is free, but you will need to ask for it at the post office. Instead of being run through a machine, a person will stamp each postcard individually to cancel the stamp. Not only is this safer for the postcards, but it also adds a unique touch to the way they look.

Picture Invitations

The idea of picture invitations is a relatively new one, but they are becoming increasingly popular because of the amount artistic freedom they offer the couple. The idea behind them is that both the bride and the groom will have their picture taken holding and/or surrounded by items displaying the information about their wedding. For example, the couple could be standing underneath a banner that announces the recipient is invited to their wedding. The bride could be holding a poster that has the date and time of the wedding, and the groom could be holding one with the location. Standing next to them could be a chalkboard that has any additional information about the wedding, such as when to RSVP by.

In addition to the level of creativity offered by picture invitations, they are also extremely easy to create and mail once the photograph has been taken. You only have to print off as many copies of the picture as you need, slip them into standard-sized envelopes, and mail them out. All of the information about the wedding would be included in the photograph, so nothing additional need to be done to the picture once it has been printed.

Hand Deliver Your Invitations

If you plan to make invitations that are large and/or heavy, it is a good idea to hand deliver most or all of your wedding invitations. Not only will this save on postage, but it also creates a very personal touch for your guests. It is likely that you will be inviting at least a few people to your wedding that are from out of town and/or start, so these invitations will most likely have to be mailed. However, having to mail a handful of invitations is much cheaper than having to mail them all.

When you are deciding what type of invitations to do for your wedding, it is important to remember that your wedding invitations do not have to be expensive. Stunning wedding invitations can easily be made even for those on the tightest of budgets. Make sure to look around and see what other people have done before making your final decision. Ultimately, the most important thing is for you to be happy with them—and part of that happiness will come from knowing that you got your wedding invitations for less.