In my search for a cheap invitation option for my budget wedding, I considered all of the many different options out there and ultimately decided to make my own wedding invites. I think there are many wonderful choices out there for invitations and since they are all priced slightly differently, it can be hard to compare them against their competitors. Keep in mind that buying an invitation kit may save you money but will also take a lot more time to put together. You also need to factor in printing costs (unless you have a really nice printer and an unlimited supply of ink.) Each budget choice is going to appeal to a different type of bride, but here’s how I made my wedding invites (cost breakdown is at the bottom)
Supplies:
White Card Stock
Blue Card Stock
Yellow Ribbon
Hole Punch, scissors, glue
The first thing I did (after spending millions of hours on Pinterest) was design my invite. If you’re handy with graphic design, you can do this in just a few minutes. You can also use a free template online to design it, or have a computer savvy friend do it for you (give them all the wording you want included and let their creative genius fly!) Using a template will be less original, but they’re also MUCH faster for people (like me) that are not comfortable trying to design their own. I used a free template from Weddingchicks for mine, then had it printed onto white card stock at an office supply store. I bought the card stock and most of my supplies during the Black Friday sale and also made sure the invite was only in black ink, which is cheaper to print then color – 13 cents a page vs 35 cents.
Printed invites and blue card stock cut in half
Once the invites were printed, I cut them out, and then used craft scissors to give them a scalloped border. I cut all the blue card stock in half (using a paper cutter at work – off the clock of course!) and then used a hole punch to punch in 22 holes around the border. I can hole punch about ten cards before my hands start hurting, so I recommend sharing this task! (**To make this more efficient, use one card as your “guide” so you don’t have to guess where each hole should be punched.**)
Once that was completed, I threaded the ribbon through each of my holes and tied it in a bow at the top, then glued the white print to each invite. It sounds really simple and overall it was, but threading the ribbon was pretty time consuming, as was cutting out and gluing on each individual invite. I took the blue stock to a happy hour and had my girlfriends help with threading the ribbon, and B and I did the rest together. From start to finish, the invites took less than a week to make from printing to putting in the mail.
The hole punch broke on the LAST one. Whew!
You can see my hole punch “guide” in the bottom right of the picture above.
Don’t buy craft scissors: your friends with kids likely already have them.
Getting really to assemble invites.
The finished invitation!
What I learned: If I had to do it again, I would probably just print the invite on regular paper instead of card stock. It would have looked just as nice and I would have needed to use less glue to securely adhere it to the blue card stock. I also paid too much for ribbon at first. After I started, I found a cheaper option, but you can’t return ribbon once you’ve cut it, so I was stuck with what I had already used. Punching holes and threading the ribbon was the most time consuming part, so I would consider having fewer holes, maybe just two at the top to save time – and my hands.
What I spent:
Card stock: $14.50 for 50 individual sheets of blue
$3.59 for a pack of white, black Friday sale.
Ribbon: $7 on sale
Printing costs:$7.67 (black ink only)
Envelopes: $9.96 for 100 on sale
Heart seals for the outside of envelope: $6.98 on sale
Hole punch: $2.79 on sale I borrowed the craft scissors for making the fancy edge and already owned the glue.
Total: $52.49 or $.52 per invite, and few evenings of my time.
Melissa in Progress 