Print your own invitations?

We have turned into a digital society and have access to so many things that were previously unavailable. While planning my wedding, I wanted to cut costs by printing my own invitations. I figured I would go to Staples or one of the office supply superstores or craft stores and buy a box of invitations. Print them at home and nobody would know the difference. Right?

Wrong, I looked every where, in every store and all over the Internet. I could not find invitations to print at home that I liked. So I began the search of looking for invitations in those millions of catalogs you get in the mail. When you start to think of how much time, effort, ink, etc. it would take to print your invitations at home - save yourself the aggravation. Buy them. You don't have to buy the very expensive and fancy invitations but do yourself the favor and buy something.

I found my invitations on the Invitations by Dawn website. I loved them and they were very simple. I was able to cut expenses by only having colored ink on the invitations themselves. Everything else was blank ink (envelopes, response cards, receptions cards, etc.) I also chose a standard size invitation - be very careful because all of the beautiful square invitations will cost you more in postage. I also did not order the matching thank you cards. I took a special picture on our honeymoon and used that to order my own photo cards from Snapfish.com. On the back of the card I wrote the date the photo was taken and where it was taken so my guests would know it was from our honeymoon and an actual picture we took (See above, we had the bride and groom flip flops and make our foot prints in the sand and then took a picture of them - side by side.)

Just a quick recap and a few more fun ideas:

1. When planning a wedding, time is money - buy your invitations.


2. Limit the colored ink you use - colored ink costs more.


3. Make sure you order enough invitations the first time, it is cheaper to buy more at one time than it is to reorder.


4. Pick a standard size invitation - odd sizes cost more in postage.


5. Before you buy stamps, assemble an invitation and take it to the Post Office. They will tell you what postage you need. You will probably need the $0.51 stamps for the outside envelopes and regular stamps for the RSVP envelopes.


6. Be creative, don't buy the standard thank you cards that match your invitations. Use a picture from your honeymoon to create a personalized card that your guests will really appreciate.


7. Coupons, coupons, coupons - do not ever buy anything online unless you have a coupon code. I usually go to Google.com and do a search for coupon codes for the site I am buying from.