Wedding Blog
Before Mr. Powder Puff and I were even engaged, I never pictured myself making my own invitations. EVER. In fact, I considered myself a girl who didn’t even really care what the invitations looked like.
That was until I started reading wedding blogs. And oh! What gloriously beautiful invitation suites! They had letterpress! Calligraphy! Gold fairy dust! Aaaaaand they were completely out of our budget.
Enter DIY invitations. Now, there are times when you can buy invitations for much cheaper than you can make them. For us, it was definitely more cost-effective to make them. And in the interest of helping you, dear readers, make that all-important decision if you’re wavering on the edge of the DIY canyon, I’ve decided to disclose our invite budget.
Here’s how the costs broke down. All of our paper products were from Paper Source, except for the A7 envelopes, which were from Envelopemall.com.
Total: $152 for 100 invitations
Hours and hours of my life, not to mention, my sanity: priceless
Yes, making our invitations definitely made me a little cuckoo. At times I even considered ditching the whole thing and giving our guests a klassy wedding invite phone call. But in the end, it was a fantastic feeling to throw *ahem*… I mean, lovingly place the whole bunch in the mailbox and send them on their way.
So, in the end, was it worth it? Yes. Would I do it again? Absolutely.
Did DIY save you money, or was it a labor of love?
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We DIY’d our invites and I love them with my whole heart. But I’m pretty sure I could have found a more cost effective solution - we spent about $300/$350 including stamps. We have lots of extra (and mess-ups) but I think we are only sending out about 70 invites!
Ummm…gonna go with a little of both. I wound up sending about 120 invites and I designed them and had them printed and cut and then assembled them myself. But honestly it wasn’t really about the price (okay…a little bit of it was) it was really about the fact that I couldnt find anything that I liked and that would work with our color scheme and general feel of the party (Fushia, Navy Blue and Pola dots!! Party, Party, Party) In the end I did wind up spending less monetarily but more in time but I have something I can be proud of (Except for the TWO typos on the RSVP postcard I didnt see until I sent it out…AARRGHHH!!!)
I DIY’d my invitations since I only needed like 15 to invite about 23 people. (We’re have a very intimate wedding.) I could have had just 15 made for me by an Etsy vendor I guess but designing them myself gave me the freedom to use the extra cardstock I ordered for coordinating programs, menu cards, favor tags and fun “Do Not Disturb” door hangers for our OOT guests. I really got into the whole process and so far it has been the most fun project in my planning process.
Definitely feeling your pain on this one. I decided to DIY our invites because I couldn’t find any in our budget that I really loved. It’s turned into a labor of love at this point but they should be done and in the mail first thing in the morning- I can’t wait!
I envy all of you who have the time to do anything yourselves. We simply don’t have the time. Yesterday, we received samples from Bella Figura and absolutely love one of the invitations. It will be challenging enough for us to find the time to put all the different pieces for each invite together.
I would love to DIY invites, I simply do not know where to start.
I have some DIY projects in mind that I’d like to do because I want to be crafty. The invites, however, are a DIY project I’m going to do simply because of the cost.
It will be interesting, when that project gets going… I hope I don’t go crazy! Hopefully we won’t need more than 50 invites, so that shouldn’t be too bad, right?
I’m in the process of DIYing my invites, primarily because anything within my budget was just plain boring. It doesn’t help that we’re sending out nearly 275 invitations. I hope that it turns in to a “labor of love” soon - right now the project is just overwhelming.
I did a little of both. I picked up a great invitation suite at Target, found some great scrapbooking paper to line the envelopes with. I love them. All in all, they will cost 1.50/invitations for 100 (no stamps yet).
Wow you did yours very cheaply! I guess what really added to our price was the pocketfolds…Great job with your budget!
That is great! I am plannin on DIYing (if the man ever proposes!) but we have already estimated the guest list and it is probably going to be 600+!!! I’m gonna go crazy!
I did a mix. I ordered my invites from Davids Bridal and they didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted… there is about a 2″ space before the wording even starts on the invitation card! So since I just learned how to emboss I am going to emboss a trio of hearts at the top to give it a little something. Overall I am happy with the way they look now and I’m glad I didn’t attempt to DIY the entire thing. I think it would have been a disaster!
Hahaha!
I could’t find the color envelopes I wanted in our price range so I decided to DIY the envelopes for our Save the dates… I think I’d rather gag myself with a spoon than do this for the invites. We will be BUYING them for the invites.
We did ours for under $2 per invite (and probably 20+ hours of work!) We are getting tons of compliments from our friends… but the best compliment that I got yesterday was, “your invitations are just so YOU!”
What more could we want than that?!
wow - where is this picture taken? the DIY stores I have gone to are not this impressive!!
I ordered my invites before I found Weddingbee, but if I could go back and find WB sooner and all this inspiration, I would have without a doubt tried to DIY mine!
Your invites are INCREDIBLE and I hope you concentrate more on that than pain & agony they caused you 
We DIY’d ours & I wouldn’t have it any other way!!
I wish I had time to DIY my invites. I was in SHOCK because of the cost of my invitation. I was lucky because I was able to get them through Direct Buy but if not it would have been over 1,000.00!! DIY invite would definitely have saved ALOT of money.
Our DIY invites didn’t save us any money, but it was definitely a labor of love. I’ve lost track of how many prototypes were made (and thrown away) and countless hours of designing, printing, cutting, gluing…I’m very happy with them, but it’s so. much. work.
FI is glad to have the dining table back as well.
It turns out that I could have gotten really nice letterpress invites for the cost of what I DIYed. I hate that. I wish I would have had them made. Because making them myself took a TON of time and energy! In retrospect I would have outsourced.
i spent more than i wished because i had to buy the ‘gear’ like a paper slicer/scorer thingy and other tools.
but i LOVE my invites, gave me a great chance to bond with my helpers, and hey, i can always ebay the craft stuff after that 
I actually did save money on my passport STDs, although they were also a labor of love!
While I didn’t spend the outragous $600 price tag that seems to come with invitations, I did spend around $200, which I don’t really consider saving. I mean, sure I could have done my invites for $50 or so, but they looked waaaay better (if I do say so myself ) than if I would’ve went the “cheaper” route. So I would say that my actual invites were more labor of love and less saving.
Definitely don’t trust myself enough to DIY the invites…but through Etsy, we found an extremely talented designer to help keep it (somewhat) reasonable!
I’m in the process of doing my invitations and I love it!! I spent about $400 on everything (paper cutter, stamps, and xyron incl) but I have all the necessary pieces to make invitations, RSVP cards, direction cards, place cards, table numbers, menus, programs and favor pieces. I’ll even have enough decorative paper left over to design the thank you cards!
For me it is absolutely both. Papercrafting is one of my big hobbies, so I had to DIY them. Our design trials have been a bit more costly than I thought, but we have almost all the supplies now, and we’ve worked out a way to save a ton of money on paper. (I highly suggest several trials before making the final decision). BONUS- it’s now labor day weekend, and we paper ladies know what that means- MAJOR sales on paper at all the major craft stores! Our task tonight is to collect all the paper we need for the wedding invites (though we dont need to send them for another oh, six months) for the low low price of 6 pages for $1! Yay craft stores and your predictability- I mean, awesomeness!
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Mrs. Powder Puff, Chicago
Age and Occupation: 25, Preschool Teacher
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 25, Career Services
Engagement Date: May, 2008
Wedding Date: July, 2009
Blogging Since: November 12, 2008
Venue: Outdoor ceremony, banquet hall reception
About Me: I am your typical Midwestern girl attempting to plan a sane, budget-friendly, fun wedding to the man of my dreams. I love shoes, laughing at “Platinum Weddings”, crafts, inspiration boards, candy, and basically anything I can DIY. While weddings can certainly be all-consuming, I honestly can’t wait until the ceremony is over and I can finally call Mr. Powder Puff my husband!
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