Save The Date Question and Cost of Invites

[areagirlsbestfriend]

sorry ladies, this is kind of a garbled post .. I was wondering if I should be sending STDs for my Friday wedding ... I wasn''t going to send them originally, just to save a little money, but now I''m thinking maybe I should? So people are forewarned that they may have to either take off work or take a half day? Thoughts? I''m actually getting excited for them, I looked on the site IndyGal used for her invites and found ones that I think are perfect .. But I don''t want to talk myself into another expense if I don''t HAVE to have them. Thoughts???

Also, I was wondering how much money every one spent on their actual invitations ... final cost, plus postage.

Thanks!!! I''m just trying to get an idea for my stationary budget and I don''t want to go overboard.

 

[Independent Gal]

Hi Aagbf, (I STILL keep reading your screen name as Area Girl's Best Friend... why do I do that?)

I totally don't think Save the dates are necessary. Just let people know informally. Most people don't have to book off work more than a couple of months in advance, so if that's when you're sending out the actual invites, no worries.

Total cost for invites, with stamps:
Invite - $3
RSVP card - $0.50
Domestic Stamp - 0.58
(Intl stamps were 1.80, in case you need that info)
Domestic stamp for RSVP card - 0.42

= $4.50 total per invitation, including postage, for the ones that we mailed within the USA.

 

[areagirlsbestfriend]

Thanks IndyGal! So you didn''t do STDs, I assume?

I''m trying SO hard not to buy into all the wedding hoopla and focus on "musts" .. but then everything turns into a must!! I am in love with these: http://invitesite.com/weddings/save_the_date/calcard_cezanne.html

I thought it might be fun to include the wedding webpage for our guests to visit, like many of the other ladies have done. And then I think, "oh well it makes it official .." although many of our guests know or will know through word of mouth eventually.

Ahhh! Talk me out of it!

 

[happy in love]

I don''t remember what we spent on our std''s, (i know it was less than $100) but we needed to send them out since it was a "destination" wedding for 95% of our guests.
Our invites came to about $6 each including postage. That included the invite, reception card, rsvp and envelope w/stamp, directions, accomodations, potpourri sachet and the box. I DIYed every part, which saved tons!! I don''t know if that figure will help you much, but I thought I''d post it just in case.

 

[misysu2]

I''m less than 90 days from my wedding and only 4 people have visited my wedding website. We invited 150! I''m not so sure it was worth it.

 

[Independent Gal]

Yeah, what misysu said. My guess is that most of your guests don''t care all that much about your wedding website. No offence. Your wedding (none of our weddings) is the focus of their lives. It''s just something to do and celebrate on weekend x, not something they are going to look into, research, or think obsessively about months in advance.

And our wedding is a destination wedding for about 85% of our guests, and we STILL didn''t do STDs. We just called, e-mailed, casually mentioned, and it was A-OK. In fact, we don''t even have a wedding website. And last I looked the sky hasn''t fallen in.

The best way to cure yourself is to think of what else you could do with the money, either for your wedding, or for you. As in ''no STD''s = AWESOME CANDY TABLE!'' or ''no STD''s = GORGEOUS GEMSTONE!'' etc.

 

[misysu2]

Date: 2/29/2008 3:37:32 PM
Author: Independent Gal
Yeah, what misysu said. My guess is that most of your guests don''t care all that much about your wedding website. No offence. Your wedding (none of our weddings) is the focus of their lives. It''s just something to do and celebrate on weekend x, not something they are going to look into, research, or think obsessively about months in advance.

And our wedding is a destination wedding for about 85% of our guests, and we STILL didn''t do STDs. We just called, e-mailed, casually mentioned, and it was A-OK. In fact, we don''t even have a wedding website. And last I looked the sky hasn''t fallen in.

The best way to cure yourself is to think of what else you could do with the money, either for your wedding, or for you. As in ''no STD''s = AWESOME CANDY TABLE!'' or ''no STD''s = GORGEOUS GEMSTONE!'' etc.

I didn''t do STD''s either. Don''t regret it for a second and saved tons of money and time!

Listen to IndyGal on the above quote-- she knows what''s up!!

 

[areagirlsbestfriend]

Thank you for talking me down off the ledge! I think I''m just itching to DO something .. I want something tangible for the wedding right NOW. I''m not in any hurry, the wedding is year out anyway. I think I''ll just bookmark that page, and come back to it in 6 months and see how I feel about it, how the money situation looks, etc.

And yes .. what would I spend that money on? Probably clothes

you guys are the best! haha.

 

[Independent Gal]

Why not order your wedding rings! We did that almost first thing and it was great fun. And it''s totally tangible and makes it all feel real. Plus, you can now put that money from the STD''s toward the rings.

 

[misysu2]

If you''re excited to do something, you could do a website if you want. Can''t promise it''ll be visited much, like I said before, but I know how you feel about wanting to do something!

I used www.ewedding.com, and their basic site is free.

 

[basil]

Yeah, if you are itching to do something, make a wedding website! There are tons of free sites, so if you decide to change things around later, you can always get a new one. We ended up actually using googlepages for ours anyway, since it seemed to give us a little more flexibility.

Save-the-dates aren''t mandatory, but my mom really wanted to do them, so she did. She did them DIY, I think the final cost was probably in the $50-75 range, though that''s not counting the fact that she bought some sort of sticker machine to do them.

There is a huge range in invitation costs. We haven''t decided yet what we are going to do...Options are for my mom to DIY them, to purchase something premade, or to have this girl design and print them for us. She is pretty reasonable - like $5-6 each for a pocketfold invite with several inserts, map card, etc, all custom designed. So I don''t think DIY would actually be much cheaper. But I think my mom wants to do it.

 

[violet02]

I really like STDs. Particularly since a lot of folks will have to travel across the country and need to plan ahead. We got magnets which are super cute and they also have our wedding website URL on them which is where a lot of our info for the wedding is (hotels, activities, calendars etc etc) The cost for 75 magnets was 119.00 pre shipping cost. You can DIY a nice inexpensive STD yourself as well.

We''re only inviting about 80 people to our wedding and I launched our website a month ago (we have an Oct wedding) and we''ve had a couple hundred hits already. I did put a lot of work into the site though so there''s a lot of fun stuff on there. I also have pwd protected pages for the bridesmaids and groomsmen to post comments and photos for attire etc. Our wedding website also has a budget manager, seating chart manager, online rsvp functionality and its how i''m managing our guest list. The guest entries also allow you to note when invite were sent, presents received etc. Great management tool. If you really want to take it a step further you can allow your guests to access their profiles to update info etc. We use http://www.wedshare.com. It may also help that we have a lot of techie friends but overall having the wedding website means less printing of info, schedules etc in the invitation. We''ll include a card that refers people to the site for the bulk of the info. Our registry is linked off our site as well. I was going to do online RSVP only but my friends and planner think its better to stick to tradition and send the card out. Also my friend said it was fun getting those cards in the mail. I''ll probably offer both options. That was going to be one way to save money on stationary though.

Not to totally contradict Indy but our guests so far have really loved our website. We''ve received a lot of compliments on it and since both our families are not in the area and we have friends all over the place it gives everyone a chance to get to know us better. Some wedding websites can have too much junk on them but we kept it pretty concise. We even have a 5 day weather forecast on there! I''ve really liked all of the wedding websites my friends have done as well.

I''m getting my invitations made by a woman locally http://penelopepaperie.com/... she''s actually in the midst of moving to Chicago. She''s great though. I got to pick out exactly the paper and colors I liked, she had a big selection and she customizes them however you want.

Her quote for 59 invitations was 9.00 each (comes wth two card enclosures).
59 RSVP envelopes, .75 each.
I''d asked her to possibly make 80 favor tags too at .75 each, so my current total is $635.25. We may have her do wedding announcements for extended family (something my stepmom wants) thats $4 each.

If we dont do the favor tags we''re at about 575.25. We''d budgeted $600 total for stationary so we''ve gone over a bit.