Do-It-Yourself Invitations - Final Product (Some Assembly Required)

Here they are! Our wedding invitations. I just LOVE saying that! (Fun fact: If you send an invite to the White House, you will receive a congratulations from the President! For a list of VIPs to invite, click here.)

After much research and falling in love with so many different invitation designs, weeks of designing on our own, and finding paper at a bargain, we were ready to print and assemble. Our goal in making our own invitations was two-fold: save money and use as little paper as possible. As a means of saving money, we designed all the printing to be in black ink, and used our own printer on high quality. It actually ended up using less ink than I had originally expected. In order to save paper, we ditched the traditional inner envelope and number of inserts used. Rather than have our guests mail an RSVP card back to us (which uses more paper and costs more in postage), we included a small insert that read,

"The favor of your response is requested by [date]. In order to RSVP and
read more about the details of the wedding and reception, please visit our
website: [URL address]."

Because the wedding venue is a down a country road, we included an insert that had a map on one side and the venue's address with driving directions on the other. I was able to print two invitations on one 8.5"x11" piece of paper, eight RSVP inserts on one piece, and four maps on one piece of paper. That meant just under 100 sheets of blue paper for all invitations and inserts. Using my nifty Martha Stewart paper trimmer ($24.99 at Michaels), I sliced all the pieces apart in one evening.

I used permanent adhesive tape designed for scrap booking to attach the blue paper to the black. eBay comes in handy for buying this adhesive tape in bulk. I bought six Darice Permanent Adhesive Rollers from eBay store Wholesale Craft Outlet for $11.98 plus $4.92 in shipping. These rollers are like those correction tape rollers, only larger. They take some practice getting used to, though.

I was stumped, though, when it came to putting all three pieces in the envelope. Do I just toss them in the envelope in descending size order? That seems a little too unceremonious. Do I tie a ribbon around all three? Eh. That's when Future Hubby came up with a brilliant idea: cut two slits in the back of the invitation's black backing and tuck the inserts into the slits!

What a neat little package! I purchased Avery labels (model #6570) from eBay store Buy for $9.14 plus $6.30 shipping and used our damask design to create fancy stickers to seal the envelopes.

Now all I have to do is monitor our website for RSVPs! (Fun fact: Some of our friends RSVPed online weeks before the invites were sent out. Yep, those are my peeps!)

COST FOR D.I.Y. INVITATIONS:

Aspire Petallic Juniper Berry paper (350 sheets): $37.97

Aspire Petallic Juniper Berry envelopes (250): $45.97

Shipping for Petallic paper: $12.73

Wausau Astrobright Eclipse paper (250 sheets): $24.57

Martha Stewart paper trimmer: $24.99

Darice Permanent Adhesive Rollers (6): $16.90

Avery I.D. Labels (#6570): $15.44
Printing (used own printer and black cartridge): free

Calligraphy on envelopes: $14

Postage for 100 envelopes: $44.00

TOTAL COST: $236.57

When you consider that it would have cost at least $600 for 105 invitations (without postage), that's a great savings!