FAQs about Making Your Own Wedding Invitations

Photo by Starfish Studios.

So, you're thinking about making your own wedding invitations, but you're not sure where to begin or whether it's worth the time and effort? You've come to the right place!  I had a lot of the same questions when I created our wedding invitation suite (show above). I found some good information on the Wedding Bee forums.  However, I thought it might be helpful to have all the information in one place!  Note: I'm not able to find the link to the beautiful template I found for these invitations online. I will add it if/when I find it!

FAQ's about Wedding Invitations:
1) Will I save money by making my own invitations?

If you are on the low maintenance or the high maintenance end, you will save money. If you are in the middle, it would probably be cheaper and easier to have your invitations made by a wedding site. 

Let me explain what I mean. The factors that drive up costs for making your own invitations are the number of pages you want for your invitations, and also how many "extras" you want, like belly bands (the little purple strip you see above with our names on it) or pocket invitations (they grey fold-out folder you see above that holds all the pieces together).  On the low maintenance end, you might want a one page invitation with a simple reply card. In that case, you would definitely save money because you just need to find a cheaper printer (more on that later).

If you are in the middle on the maintenance side, wedding companies are pretty well priced for this range, so you can find a good deal (with a coupon). I'd recommend that route (it will save you lots of time)!

On the high maintenance end, you save money because companies charge you a high premium for every extra piece plus assembly. For example, in my invitations, I used envelope liners (the purple paper in the envelope), a background mat (it makes the purple border on the invite), inserts cut at different heights, a pocket fold, and also a belly band. A company would charge me a high price for each piece, and they would also charge me to put it together. So, it's cheaper to make it yourself!  However, it's still not cheap. In total, I spent $294 on our wedding invitations. Here's my specific price breakdown:

$137 on printing

$18.40 on large envelopes

$26.90 on envelope liners

$14.40 on RSVP envelopes

$64 on pocketfolds

$16 on the background mat

$17.92 on the belly bands

2) How do you figure out how to make the invitations?

There are some great boards on Pinterest and on Weddingbee.com. People are really nice, and they will post their templates. You can modify their templates to fit what you need!

3) How do you print your invitations?

I did a lot of research on this topic. I tried a home printer, but I had trouble printing my invitations on nice, heavy cardstock. The printer kept jamming because I really wanted heavy cardstock to give the invites that nice, "wedding" feel. I sent away for numerous paper samples, and I also tried printing at Kinkos. Kinko's was ok, but their prices were not very competitive for the large numbers of pages I needed (I printed three different pages in color for each invite - for the main invitation, the inserts, and the RSVP cards).  In the end, I liked Catprint the very best (and they don't even pay me to say that). You can order paper samples from them, and I used Heavy Card Stock - Felt.  If you sign up for a newsletter, they tend to send out coupons about once a month!

4) Is it worth the effort to print your own invitations?

It depends on how tight your budget is, and how much you would enjoy making your own invitations. I love crafting, so I really enjoyed making these invitations. However, I did feel really tired by the end - so if the cost saving is minimal and you do not enjoy crafting, I'd definitely recommend buying your invitations from a company instead. 

Hope this is helpful, and I hope you all have wonderful wedding days!

~SaltyCrafts

Photo by Starfish Studios.