How to Save Money on Your Wedding Invitations

January 11, 2020

This is part six of my six-part series on how to save money while planning a wedding.

Traditional wedding invitations were more elaborate than our modern equivalents and were often sent to a calligrapher for addressing and adding the names of individual guests. Now, invitations can be simpler and may or may not contain all of the components of traditional wedding invitations, as follows:

Response cards with meal choices

Self-addressed and stamped envelopes for guests to return the response cards

Registry information cards (Emily Post shudders at the idea of including registry details on invitations themselves)
Directions to the ceremony and/or reception venues
Lodging information for guests
The invitations themselves
The invitation itself

There are many more options nowadays than calling a print shop and paying an arm and a leg per invitation, then forking over more money to the calligrapher on top of paying for postage.

Print Them Yourself

This is the most frugal option, especially if you have access to a good-quality printer and your invitation uses color ink sparingly. There are plenty of free templates to be found for easy downloading online, so your main expenses for the invitations themselves will be ink and cardstock. The postage will cost you more than the invitations!

Make the Invitations Online

Several retailers have started to specialize in all sorts of invitations over the past few years, notably Shutterfly and Vistaprint. These retailers are good options if you do not want to worry about potentially needing to trim cardstock to the right size after printing, or if you want a more colorful design. Both also offer coupons frequently, so you can save even more by keeping a close watch on their websites before you buy the invitations.

Try ordering invitations that are not specifically for a wedding to reap additional savings. For example, I used Vistaprint to order "birthday postcards" (no address lines like a regular postcard), which ended up being $0.50 each (costing less than the stamps I bought). I ordered my response cards and return labels at the same time and they were cheaper to "add-on" to my purchase they they would have been to buy separately.

Invitations from a Store

Major brick and mortar retailers also carry wedding (and other event) invitations, which you can easily personalize. I suggest looking at craft stores such as Michael's so that you can take advantage of their excellent coupons. Party stores also carry a small selection of wedding invitations. Amazon also carries a wide selection of wedding invitations; Prime membership will allow you to return any designs that you do not like for free.

Final Thoughts

Wedding invitations were surprisingly a divisive topic as I planned my wedding. I had planned on saving money by not sending save-the-date cards, but there was a great deal of social pressure to distribute these. That was surprising, since they were not as common when I was younger, but they have grown increasingly popular and many people I spoke to considered them to be entirely necessary. I ordered "postcards" from Vistaprint for these as well and they were $0.35 each, so it cost more to mail them than to buy them.

I had also intended to forgo response cards, as it is increasingly common to ask guests to either reply online via a website, by email, or even via text message. This also went over like a lead balloon, probably because I had a smaller wedding and most of my guests were older family friends and relatives. Since these were also a very small expense, I decided to just add them to my purchase of the invitations. I addressed all of the envelopes myself, which only took an hour or so.

Lest my experience convince you to buy these two items, I do have several friends who skipped both one or both of these options. If your engagement is particularly short (<6 months), you likely do not need a save-the-date and can simply send your invitations a little earlier. You may need to remind your guests to reply as the date approaches. If your guests are tech-savvy, you can more easily get away with virtual RSVPs.