Self Printed Invitations

So many brides create beautiful invitations. Knowing that we were going to be inviting close to 300 guests just because of the size of our families, we decided we wanted to do invitations as cheap as possible. Let's be honest, a lot of invitations will just end up in the trash anyway.

I had been looking for boxed invitations at Hobby Lobby and Target on clearance and finally found a set I liked. This set included 50 invitations, reply cards and envelopes marked down to $10/package. I bought 3 boxes, so I was at $30.

It's hard to tell from the pictures above, but the paper has a really lovely texture. It's sort of a cream color and the flower detail is a light green.

Once we figured out the wording we wanted, we decided we would run it through the printer at home just to see how the layout worked. I was so pleased with the way they printed, that I decided to just print them all myself. My cartridges were almost out of ink, so I printed them just a few at a time so I wouldn't waste the invites if my printer ran out of ink.

We printed several versions. First one was all in black. It looked nice. Then we tried one with our names in blue since our wedding colors are blue and green. There is no blue in the invitation itself or the envelope, but I still really think it looks cute. For a printing company to print these invitations in 2 colors it would have cost $.59 per invite, so $88.50 for 150 invites. MUCH CHEAPER TO DO IT MYSELF! And it printed great. No smearing. I wish my pictures would have turned out better so you could actually see how good they are.

Instead of using our RSVP cards as they are intended, I am actually going to use them as my thank you's. I printed "Thank you!" on the bottom of them in the blue to match the invites. I will be sticking a piece of card stock in the invitations that will ask the guests to RSVP online on our wedding website on theknot.com or by phone. It will also show a map to the church/reception.

So far this invitation/thank you has cost me $0.20 each!

What ways are you trying to cut the corners in your own budget?