Designing and printing own invitations

roffewoods

Morning ladies,

I am toying with the idea of designing and (maybe) printing my own invitations and response cards.    I would be okay to with have the design sent to a printer, hoping that it would still cost less than having the invitations designed and printed  by a company.  Has anyone done this before?  If so, do you recommend any printers?  I live in the Birmingham/Royal Oak area.

Thanks!

entropicbeauty

Honestly, if you are going to go thru the trouble of designing the invites yourself you might as well save yourself some money and just print them yourself as well!

You don't have to go to a fancy printer, just aquire the paper you want your invites printed on and if you do not have an adequate printer at home you CAN go to a kinkos and hand them your paper. I believe you can even ask them to only charge you for the printing (not the paper they would have printed on) to cut down on costs. If the ink smears on any of them or any of them have an imperfection you DO have the option to tell them to reprint and they won't charge you for their mistakes.

I'm a designer and the printer I plan to use is just a normal laserjet color printer that I will feed my own paper into. The quality difference between that and taking it to a "professional" printer is so small none of your guests would be able to tell.

Meegles4

I had a friend design my invitations. I then bought the paper on cardsandpockets.com. I bought pocket folds and then 8.5"x11" cardstock for my invitation and three inserts.

After my friend designed everything, she sent the files to Staples and I took the paper there. They just charged me for printing and cutting. For 120 invitations + 120 belly bands (for this I bought the paper from Staples), it was about $150. My paper from Cards & Pockets was about $200, but I bought enough for 150 invitations and also bought envelopes.

Frankly, it was worth it to me to have them printed at Staples instead of trying to mess with printing them on my home computer, especially because I had 4 different sizes of inserts I was working with.

db1985

We had a friend design our Save the Dates for us and printed them online using CatPrint.  You can request a free sample booklet to see all of their stationary.  It ended up being $36 for 55 Save the Dates and shipping (and they actually threw in about 15 extra for free!)

To me it was well worth the time and effort (and most likely a lot of mess ups) that would have come along with printing them on our home computer

We will do the same thing for our invites, RSVP and Thank you cards

MMRoberts11

I originally was going to design and print my own invites.  However, when factoring the cost of paper and ink, it was cheaper for me to design my invites and order them through vista print and just pay for the shipping (from an email coupon).  I paid ~ $20 for 100 invites and RSVP card.

Sue-n-Kevin

Invitations were not something I was particularly invested in. I found lovely invitation sets at Michael's for $5 for 50 on the sale table even before we set our date. I liked them, they set the tone for our wedding, and I just printed them at home.

I did a lot of DIY printing at home (I have a laserjet), not color, which didn't matter because our colors were black & white. I printed on vellum, cardstock, resume paper that had a texture to it.............everything was fine. I did have to feed the pages individually for some of these, and had to have the vellum dry before assembling the invitations, but other than that it was pretty easy.

Good luck.

drewmw

I designed my own, and am having them printed at Office Depot. It would be cheaper that way than to buy color ink cartridges and print them myself (my printer goes through ink pretty fast). My cousin had his printed there, and they turned out great!

MrsGilliatt

I'm on the other side of the fence here unfortunately...

you get 3 real mementos from your wedding day - your pictures/video, your marriage, and your invitation.  Your guests only get the pictures they took...the parting favor...and your invitation.  If your favors aren't stellar - at least give them some hope in the invitation.  It is about so much more to me than just finding a deal.

The idea of having them personally designed is incredible.  I wish I had the talent to do something like that myself - but working with a professional will do just fine.  I personally wouldn't risk taking on a project of this size and importance to my wedding day if I hadn't done it before.  These set the tone for your event and everyone has been anxiously awaiting their arrival.  In most cases - they are carried out through the thank you cards, and some times even in the individual menu's, place cards and bar menu's. 

Just be sure you're sure!!

cpollaccia

I just used Minute Press in Plymouth for my shower invites. For 50 - 5x7 on 120lb. white card stock it was $14.50! They did a great job and did them on the spot. They will be doing my wedding invites too!