Twosome Tuesday: Wedding Invitations

Invitations are the first impression of the weddings to those attending...The first step in setting the tone with the style and the wording.


#1)  For this wedding, we not only need a lot of invitations for the 325-person guest list, but also 2 different invitations.  One will go to those invited to the small wedding, and one for those invited only to the much larger reception.                                                                                                                                             
Even though the wedding is in a park and the ceremony itself will be outside, it's intended to be elegant and formal.  We want the invitations to help communicate that.  I suggested having the more traditional raised printing, which eliminated home-printing, or stationery done by a copy/print business.                                                                                                                                                                       

Our first stop was Party City, which had several books of options.  The most affordable option was a one-piece type of invitation (Fold & Send), in which the invitation folded in 3's and didn't require an envelope.  A more casual invitation style, overall, but the font and design could retain the formal impression.                                                                                                 
The options for that style were quite limited.  Only 1 or 2 of the large invitation sample books had any at all.  So we went home to shop on the internet.                                                                                                                                                                                   
I was pleasantly surprised to find that our Costco membership allowed us to order from einvite.com with a significant discount.  Princess Sassy and Prince Steadfast chose the card style they preferred, and we worked on font styles and sizes until we got the configuration they loved.  The lettering would be dark blue and gray, and the inner envelope would be lined in silver.                                                                                                                                                 
The price was all very reasonable for the 125 reception invitations, but the smaller batch of 25 for the wedding was much less economical, per invitation, and added significantly to the cost.  Still, compared to the others we'd priced, the $351 total seemed like the best we could expect.  Thank goodness I didn't get in too big a hurry to order...

#2)  Princess Bossy had this situation well in hand, and planned from the beginning.  She visited Michael's craft store in Oklahoma, and quickly decided on an print-it-yourself orange invitation that, with the addition of ribbon trim, will coordinate with her wedding colors.  She was happy and satisfied, so I was, too, even though I was still disregarding the DIY route for Princess Sassy's wedding... Until, that is, we had some hard numbers in terms of dollars.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
A day or so after I'd figured the grand total on the evite order, Princess Bossy called me from Michael's and was discussing how many invitations she needed and mentioned a price around $20 - 40.  WHOA!  She needed only about 1/3 of the invitations that Princess Sassy needed, but that meant more savings to be found by investigating a similar plan.  The importance of raised printing faded in comparison to cutting the cost by a couple of hundred dollars.


Back to #1...
The next time I was in the neighborhood of our nearest Michael's, I stopped in to see what was available in printable stationery.  For a first try, I found some simple but elegant ivory cards that had a pearly raised border, and some white cards with glossy embossed floral decorations.  These were $1.99 for 10 cards and envelopes.  I was able to print out a couple of examples for the prince and princess.  Any concerns about lack of elegance or quality were soothed, and they were on board.                                                                                                                                        
Princess Sassy accompanied me to Michael's the next time, and chose a wedding invitation set that includes the invitation, direction cards, ribbon trim, and beautiful silver envelopes.  They won't use the RSVP cards, as such, but may be able to use them for thank-yous later.  We needed 4 boxes, and each was $40... But were on sale at 40% off, so all of their invitations cost less than $110.  The $200 in savings was moved to the budget for her dress and veil.


Printing Notes:  
It took a bit of fiddling with borders and fonts to get the invitation for Sassy and Steadfast 'just right.'  But the invitations are truly beautiful when printed.  The hard part for theirs is getting the driving instructions worked out...as there are 3 different directions from which guests will travel, and 3 completely different routes from each.  I'm still working on that, and am sure we'll figure out something, even if we have to print 3 different cards and pay close attention to which we put in whose invitation.  The great thing about printing our own invitations is that we can customize that way with no extra expense.  It won't cost more for the fewer wedding pieces than for the larger batch of reception invitations.  One downside to this particular style is that the square shape means higher postage.                                                                                                                                           
Princess Bossy is having a little more problem with her invitations.  They are long and narrow, so it took a little more margin adjustment to get them centered and printing out within the parameters.  Her RSVP cards printed out perfectly.  However, the invitation paper is a little glossy and the ink jet printer ink doesn't like it.  It's fuzzy and doesn't want to dry.  We're going to have to try a laser printer instead.