How to save money on your wedding invitations

After being in the business almost 12 years, I have seen many mistakes and I have learned a few tricks to help brides and grooms save money on their invitations. Here they are! 

1) The BIGGEST  mistake I see couples making is ordering way too many invitations. Its easy to understand how – when you think in terms of your wedding size – you think one per guest. I have many brides come to me asking for 250 invitations, and when I verify they are inviting 500+ people they get confused. You only  need one per household/ couple. So – if you are inviting 200 people, you likely need 100-120 invitations max. You want to make sure and order a couple extra but it will save you a lot of money to get the correct amount of invitations. 

2) The second biggest mistake I see is ordering invitations too late. If you are ordering invitations that re semi- custom or custom you need to allow a month or more for the design process and production. I suggest ordering your invitations 4-6 months before your wedding. This will save you money in rush fees. We are a small custom design studio and in order to accommodate rush orders we have to have the girls that work for me come in on their days off. We process every order in the order it was approved so if yours needs jumped ahead of other orders we will have to do it on a day off to be fair to the other clients. 

3) I was not the biggest fan of this one for a long time but it is growing on me. If your guest list is young and tech savvy -It will save you money on the invitations and also postage if you create a free wedding website ( the knot, wedding wire etc) and set up a rsvp section there. Instead of a card and envelope $1.50, you can simply add a small card .75 and include this information on there. I do not suggest using text, phone calls or email to let people rsvp. There is too much chance for mistakes and keeping a correct  list with these methods would be tricky. 

4) Forgo the square – square invitations are nice, but they require extra postage. Most of our designs that are shown as a square – can be made into a similar design as a 5 by 7. 

5)Tweak an existing design instead of going custom. Custom designs require more time and proofs. If you choose an existing design and tweak the colors, fonts and wording – there is usually no extra charge. 

6) Order the correct amount the first time ( with some extras for just in case)  – take the time to make a guest list even if you do not have all the addresses. I get many brides who over order – or under order and then need to rush order an additional 10 which cost much more than if they had ordered 10 more with the original order.