Wedding Projects #4: Invitations and other stationary

The budget for all wedding stationary was $300. On the list to make was invitations (including stamps), thank-you notes, ceremony programs, and reception programs. We did everything DIY as our budget was really tight. Here is what ended up working for us.

1. Invitations
We opted for a plain white invite that I found at Michaels (roughly $40 for a pack of 50 x 2 = total $85). This gave us plenty of extras as we only made about 80 total. We printed them from home on my super amazing lazer printer. I had to hand feed every sheet, but the savings made it totally worth it! We decorated the invite with a small ribbon which ended up being the wedding theme colour (dark purple). I found the ribbon at a store called Mokuba in Toronto. An entire store just dedicated to ribbon! It's amazing! I played around with different ribbon designs for several weeks and finally Dave and I figured out a way which was simple, not overly time consuming, and looked nice. (Dave actually came up with the idea of making it look like a banner, which was great!)


When it came to putting it all together, I recruited friends and family members to come help me. I ended up having about 8 helpers and we finished them all (including ribbon making, printing, addressing, stamping) in about 1 hour. What a crew!

Finally, we cut some costs by skipping Save-the-date cards (we did it the old-fashion way...by verbally TELLING people the date), and by having an online RSVP instead of a mail-in card. Also, we hand delivered as many as we possibly could (to save on postage).

Cost = $150 (approx. $2-2.50/invite)

2. Thank-you notes
I watched for sales. They were not anything special, but they looked nice and cost $40 for 100 cards.

3. Programs (Ceremony and Reception)
Dave and I designed the programs ourselves. We also had our friend Ben create a design for them which looked great! We upgraded to a nice paper as we had a bit of extra room in the budget. Total cost of these were about $150 (including 120 church programs and 100 reception programs).

Ceremony Programs

Reception Programs

This brought us to a combined total of $340! We ended up a bit over budget, but were able to cut some corners in some other areas so it all worked out in the end.
Even now it surprises me how quickly things add up!

PS: We ended up being a bit under budget (overall) so we "splurged" and spent $6 on a homemade crossword puzzle created by Dave. We put these out during the reception for the guests.