Question about DIY Invitations

Erickag

For those of you who have done the invitations yourselves, rather than ordering them - any tips? I am thinking of purchasing them from Hobby Lobby, then getting them printed at Kinko's...

Also - has anyone done away with the RSVP card, instead directing them to the website or to phone in an RSVP? I'm trying to cut the cost on stationary and postage...

kelseymw

I semi-DIYed my invitations. I bought the paper from Michaels and am printing them myself but I had them designed by someone off Etsy. 

Two things: 

*Kinkos IMO is expensive... $0.69/invite for color. This can be quite costly if you need a lot of invites. I am not sure of the cost but I have heard others on this board rec QuickPrint before. (On page 2 there is a post called "DIY Invites- Panicking!" where printer recs are discussed.) 

*I was looking to save money too so I considered alternative RSVP ideas. A paper RSVP is necessary IMO in order to better keep track of RSVPs. A phone call would require you to keep track of all the responses, and what about missed calls etc, it might turn in to phone tag which would be annoying. Plus I thought about myself- I am SO bad about calling people. A website is a nice "green" alternative, but I knew some people on my guest list are not internet savvy and some people would be put off by it. (Obviously all of this depends on your guests. Only you know your guests' personalities.) I ultimately decided on RSVP Postcards and had them printed through Vistaprint. I am SO pleased with them and only spent $30 for 200 postcards. Postcard postage is about 1/2 the price of regular postage too. 

MnMShaw

I bought my invitations from target, designed them myselves, and printed them at home.  If you can get it worked out, it would save you money to print on them at home.  Also, ditto others, I think it would save you a lot of time and hassle if you have a paper RSVP and don't resort to online ones.  But then again, maybe someone that succesfully did that could speak up?  Also, I too had good experiences with vistaprint.com and you could do RSVP postcards and the stamps would save you money on those.

jamieann13

I did my own invitations - bought the paper at FasClampitt (awesome!) here in town as well as The Paper Place, designed them myself and had them printed at QuickPrint (my post is the one the other Knottie recommended you read). Bought envelopes online through www.envelopesexpress.com - they also provide free samples if you are interested.

A few tips - if you a buying paper and having someone print it, ALWAYS have the paper tested before you buy it all, that was the main hurdle I came across.
Kinkos was more expensive, so I went through QuickPrint - they discount their color printing if only using black and white. The Paper Place has some great options, but the pricing isn't really DIY friendly. FasClampitt was great and had something almost exactly like what I had purchased at The Paper Place at like 75% of the cost.

We are doing online RSVPs, and I just included a card that directed them to our website to RSVP. For those that might not be online saavy, I included a phone number as well. The invites went out last week, and so far we've had about 10 RSVPs online and no issues so far. I'm sure we'll have to track some people down as it gets closer, but for the most part don't believe it will be a huge issue.

We saved alot of money with our invites, and I also designed a map - however it was a little stressful along the way. Just make sure you get everything lined up a litte in advance in case something doesn't work out exactly right so you have the time to figure it out. Good luck!!