Savings Tip #7: Make Your Own Invitations
Lacey |
Thoughtfully composed by Lacey Filed under: Financial Planning, Wedding |
There are a couple options for making your own invitations, depending on your skill level and preference.
1) You can actually make the invitations but cutting out card stock, ribbons, etc. (A woman I know makes cards by herself, a similar hobby to scrap booking, and she makes the most beautiful cards!) If you’re a crafty bride-to-be, this may be a nice option for you.
2) You can find pre-made cards, but hand write the information on them. A lot of women have really great handwriting, and some people may know calligraphy or another fancy type of handwriting (it doesn’t have to be calligraphy!) that would look great on your invitations, and you could proudly pronounce that you were able to do them yourself! At stores that carry art supplies (or maybe even Walmart), you should be able to find pens in various colors, even silver and gold. I think those types of pens would look very nice on an invitation. If you can’t do it yourself, you could simply pay a calligrapher (which would be less then having the invitations printed professionally and a calligrapher).
3) You can print out the invitations, using special cards meant for your printer. Now this is a much better option for me, I am talented with the computer and have terrible handwriting and I don’t quite have the patience to make my own cards from scratch. Here are some examples of cards you can buy to print on, some are kind of plain, but not all of them, with some good research you can probably find some really beautiful cards.
4) You can use computer software to print out a pretty design on plain card stock. I use Hallmark’s Card Studio for birthday cards and such, and I LOVE the program, some of the wedding options are also pretty. You can also try Print Shop or maybe Microsoft Publisher (but Publisher may have less wedding related material). This is probably the easiest way to make your own cards, and you can find beautiful designs and give them your personal touch. Once the cards are printed, you can even punch holes and add ribbon, or glue ribbon or translucent vellum to the cards, anything you might find pretty.
5) Here’s a tip I just recieved from a reader named Cailin. He bought fancy regular paper at an office supply store like Staples or OfficeMax. (Tanner has gotten resumes printed there on fancy paper.) At these stores, you are ususally able to buy single sheets of paper to make samples on your home printer, then purchase a packet of paper to print out all your invitations on your home printer (they also have printing services at these stores so you could also have them print it for you, but check the price on this first). Great idea Cailin!
Here’s another great wedding article with 10 tips on saving money on wedding invitations .
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May 3rd, 2007 at 4:05 am
Actually, there’s one more option that you haven’t covered yet
It’s the option we used for our wedding invitations…
Most shops that carry office supplies also have a wide assortment of very cool paper. Naturally they’ve got the basic, white paper and all sorts of colours, but they also carry standard A4 paper (or Letter-size in the US) that looks like parchment or papyrus. Buying a hundred sheets of that particular paper is bound to be a lot cheaper than buying real cards.
Using “normal” paper will allow to get all creative on the computer (like I did) and get very nice looking cards at a decent price.
One last bonus of doing it this way: aside from selling packets of the paper, most of the shops also sell single sheets of these special papers. That way you can take home a few samples and print your design on them to see which looks best.
Good luck to you guys!
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:28 am
My Wife and I printed our own cards (blank stock with embossing) and I did the same for my dad’s wedding - we spent about $5-10 on the cards themselves and it took me about an hour to design them, get them printed correctly on the cards, and set the printer loose.
Oh, and always test if you print - I printed a couple indiviudals to make sure I had them lined up correctly.