how much did you spend?

catwine

we went the DIY route for our nvites because we thought it would be cheaper, plus we can make them unique and exactly the way we want.  I recently added up all the costs for invites and they came to be a lot more than i thought!

we spent:

$30 for plain ivory inviations and envelopes
$10 for RSVP card envelopes
(RSVP cards were made from leftover invite paper cut in half)
$70 for stamps
around $50 for all the emobssing gear
$5 for fancy pen to hand address envelopes
$11 for custom mongram rubber stamp

I had hoped to keep it under $100, but I guess we over spent.
what did you all end up paying? 

hoffse

We're going to be spending about $450 to get 200 invitations, thank yous, reception cards, RSVP cards, and enclosure cards.  Everything will be thermographed, and we will have return addresses pre-printed for the invitations, RSVP cards, and thank yous.  We're also getting inner, lined envlopes.  Postage is probably going to cost another $300 or so.

It's a lot of money, but I really wanted thermography invitations.  The next cheapest option I could find was going to be around $1200+ for the same sort of thing, so I feel like we're getting a hell of a deal.  I had originally budgetted around $2000 for invitations plus postage, so this gives us some wiggle room in the guest list or for other things.

willywally5

DD's invites and RSVP cards came in about $650 for 220 sets. We upgraded to a metallic paper, which was spendy but really looks cool. She, her FI and I designed them together. We lucked out and they only require regular postage, so that helped. 

LeiselEB

I think invitations is one of the easiest places to overspend. A lot of magazines or websites say you should spend X amount of budget on invites, but that's not always realistic depending on how many people you're inviting, what kind of invitations you're interested in, etc. invites can be incredibly expensive or really cheap. It justs depends on what you get. Ours were on the ridiculously expensive side, but it's what we liked. As long as you're happy with the invitations you have and you can afford them, don't worry about the cost because cost is so variable with invites.

catwine

I only had 49 sets of invites, so I feel like i overspent:(

LeiselEB

In Response to Re:how much did you spend?:I only had 49 sets of invites, so I feel like i overspent: Posted by christinavy You spent less than 4 per invitation if my math is correct. To me, that's a steal. People have different ideas about what is cheap and what is expensive. As long as you can afford it dont worry about it!

secondtimemob

We are spending between $1.40 and $1.60 for each invite, depending on which printer we go with.  That is for pocketfolds, stickers to seal them, invites, envelopes, and 2 inserts. 

vantica

My FMIL is paying and arranging for the invitations and it's about $250 for 80 of them.  I found ones on etsy that may have worked fine for $1 each, so it annoys me that she's spending so much on them, even though it's not my money as weird as that sounds.  This includes invite and envelope, response card and envelope.  This does not include stamps.  (Don't even factor that in for invitations as you would have had to spend that no matter how little you spend on invites.)  (I won't even go into how I'm not 100% happy with the proofs and hate not being able to just do something myself.)

Suggestion:  If you are all done, sell all your embossing stuff for 50% of what you paid....get some of your money back! 

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_invites-paper_how-much-did-you-spend?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:cd062f89-8272-496a-b0ab-225e1f87acecDiscussion:ea410b4b-0fe3-4cec-9a81-0b37bf5bd529Post:42e4262f-e48b-4118-9961-569fb9833729">Re: how much did you spend?</a>:
[QUOTE]I only had 49 sets of invites, so I feel like i overspent:(
Posted by christinavy[/QUOTE]

DiLynn83

We spent around $475 for 110 invites, and that included our shipping costs.

I think when people DIY their own invitations, they don't factor in expenses like shipping, tax, and the price of ink.

aragx6

Paper products are the only thing I've accidentally gone over budget on. But they're flipping gorgeous and custom so I don't care.

With STDs, invitations and RSVPs, two other inserts, table numbers, place cards, programs and postage we should end up right around $1,000.

hoffse

Oh yeah I forgot STDs.  That's another $100 or so.  Even if you don't count postage, it's something people forget about when they're budgetting.  That can get expensive.

ElisabethJoanne

Ours will be between $6-$8 each, without postage. That's invitation, inner envelope, outer envelope, and RSVP postcard. We went with letterpress, and it's the only planned splurge in our budget. Even $6/each might be over-budget, but we're underbudget in lots of areas, and, again, we planned to splurge on invitations, in terms of the percentage of budget mentioned above.

It's one of lots of areas where people go "No one really cares about X wedding thing, instead they all care about Y" and we go, "Um, we don't care about Y, and we do care about X."

I can add that even at $8 each, invitations are a relatively small splurge. If we splurged on catering or alcohol or my dress, we'd be looking at thousands of dollars. Even our "very expensive" invitations are just in the hundreds. So don't get too worked up about this item.

kaos16

Kinda thread jacking. . . . but i'm doing it anyway:

To all the brides who are spending big numbers on invitations, do you plan on doing anything special with one after the wedding, or have you already?  I just couldnt personally justify spending a lot of money on something that would be thrown away, so i'm wondering what you are doing with yours. 

ElisabethJoanne

I'm sure we'll save a couple for a scrap book. We asked the printer to save the dye that's made from a pen-and-ink drawing of the church we'll be married in. The church can use that for as long as it lasts for its stationery.

As for getting thrown away, our invitations are less than our flowers, and our guests could scrapbook the invitations if they wanted, unlike the flowers.

aragx6

I guess I'm included in that kaos -- I honestly don't find ours to be terribly expensive. I know a lot of people who've spent 2 and 3 times as much as I have.

The compliments alone are worth it to me. I have a graphic design backround so paper products were one of the important "must haves" for me.

I feel like it'd be pretty easy to say the same thing about the dress. That's why I'm selling mine after the wedding.

Getting2Vowels

Our STD's were about 50$ including shipping..invites will be about 350-400$ for approx 100 sets, not including postage.

hoffse

We will scrapbook with ours.  I actually keep the invites/programs from all the weddings I go to - so yeah... I'm not one of those people who would throw it away.  I keep them because it's one of my favorite parts.

QueerFemme

We spent about 40 on the STDs. And less than 300 on 100 invites, rsvps and thank you cards with preprinted return addresses on all. They were printed with thermography. We could have gone a lil cheaper through vistaprint, but we found a style on theamericanwedding.com that we liked better.

Eyejewel

We spent little over $100 on STD from wedding paperdivas postcards but ordered way too many 135 of them. $10 for staples envelopes for them

Invites had mydesignsentations.net custom watercolor design them at $3.56 each got 118 of them and with the extra envelopes that was $420 which included printing design on envelope, return address, Invitations and reply cards plus extra envelopes. Was able to keep to normal postage rate. Made our own insert for reception/accomadition info and it was only $30 for the paper for that and printed those and addresses for envelopes our self.

Some more than we wanted to spend but was able to get free shipping from a promo since shes out of hawaii. and they are gorgeous, look way more expensive than they were and we were looking for palm fronds which was a harder to design to come by.