6 Factors to Consider in Your Wedding Invitation Budget

I know, I know, money - it's a tough subject to talk about. So let's start with this - wedding vendors WANT to talk about money, but in a good way, I promise! When we know what your budget is going into our first conversation, our goal is to find the products that are right for you. 

Maybe not everyone does, but I sure do. I offer invitations in a variety of price points and I can design you something for $500 or $5000 if you want me to. What I do is talk to you and find out not only what you want to spend, but what's important to you.

• Are you a paper addict that loves the little details?
• Are you formal and traditional or do you feel like people will just throw it away anyway?
• Do you need a pocket and tons of information to include or is your day pretty straight forward with not much more than an RSVP card?
• Do you love bling and glam or are you more casual and laid back?

There's a lot to it and it can be complicated, so here's what we'll do today. I want to talk to you about what goes into pricing so we can figure out together what works the best for you.

Let's get the elephant out in the room. How much should you budget for your wedding invitations anyway?

The national average will tell you to save about 3-5% of your wedding budget should be stationery, so if you have the average $30,000 wedding, that's about $900-$1500.

Now remember, that should include ALL of your stationery:

save the dates
invitations
postage
programs
menus
escort cards
thank you cards

So is that realistic?

But it's really up to you. Are all of those pieces things that you need? 

The one area that I see the largest range in $$s spent is the beautiful wedding invitation. It is the star right? It's the first glimpse people have into your wedding day, so let's talk about what goes into pricing so you can make informed decisions.

Design is the biggest labor factor involved in stationery designs. Most of my designs are semi-custom which means I start with a template and then change things out based on your preferences. I change out paper colors, swap out fonts and make basic layout edits to fit your text.

If you really love my work and really want to work with me on a custom design {I am SO, SO incredibly flattered!!!} I do also offer custom designs that are totally unique to you. I build in a higher design fee to these designs since they will take me 2-3xs more time to design and often require purchasing new graphics and fonts for you. Custom design can add in $0.50-$2.00 per invite depending on the complexity of your design.

Budgeting tip: If budget is a concern, consider with small alterations to a design already listed in my store. It may not take a totally custom design to make it perfect!

Paper - oh there are so many paper options out there! I choose to work with just one paper vendor to keep it all simple, but even with that, I have over 250 different papers to choose from.

All of those colors and textures are broken into 8 different price groups, so the specific colors you choose can change your pricing quite a bit. If you let me know what your target price range is and what colors you love, I'll make sure we are working with colors you can afford.

How? If you LOVE and must have glitter paper - great! Glitter paper is not cheap though, so if using it for a panel layer AND and envelope liner like you are dreaming of is just way outside of what you want to spend, why not try just a bit of glitter as a belly band instead? 

OK this seems like a no brainer right? the more paper you use the more expensive your invite will be.  Each card will cost you $0.60-$1.25 each so it can all really start to add up!

So maybe instead of a reception card and a website card and a hotel card, maybe we can combine that all into one card. Instead of an invitation with 2 panel layers, maybe just 1 would work for you!

I love pocket invitations. They keep everything neat and organized and they open just like a present. You can expect pockets to range in price from $0.80-$3.00 so they aren't all created equally.

Pricing between the different color groups is where you'll see the biggest changes here. Each price group can cause the price to jump $0.10 or $0.50 depending on the product, so let me help you here!!! Matte blush pink can be just as gorgeous as shimmery if it will save you $0.50 per invite!

We can also play around with different pocket styles to help your budget. Pocket cards, with the pocket on the back of the invite can shave off $0.30-$0.50. Or maybe we switch to something unique like an Envelofold! Envelofolds have four flaps that tuck over your invite rather than a pocket to store your cards in. It still protects your invite in the mail, but with a little less organization, but also at a lower price point.

You can find a full guide to all of the different pocket styles and prices by clicking HERE.

We talked about printing methods HERE, but the type of printing methods that you use can really change your overall cost.

I print in house which means that I'm not upcharging you for paying someone else to do it - pricing bonus!

How we can help your budget - if you really love letterpress printing, but the price makes you cringe, maybe we look at doing just a letterpress invite and digital printing on the rest of the pieces!

If your invitations have multiple layers of paper, someone has to tape them all together. That person is usually me :) The less paper you have, the less assembly you have, the cheaper your invitation will be.

How to help your budget - other than the obvious, use less paper - why not DIY it? I'm happy to let you tape the layers of paper together if you want to have a party with your 'maids do do it! It will save you $0.35 per layer.

Now here's the hard part - how do you pick both the design options that you love and that fit your budget.

I am here to help. I'm here to navigate all of the choices so that you don't have to.

Tell me what your dream invitation is and your goal budget is and we'll go from there. I'll show you what your ideal invitation will cost and then present you with a few other options that are just as beautiful but at the price you're dreaming of. Sometimes invitations don't need all of the bells ans whistles to be beautiful.

Every invitation deserves to be unique. It deserves to be you and YOU will love it. 

Click the "ready to start" photo to get working on your custom wedding invitations!

I'm going live on facebook this weekend to talk about all things related to your stationery budget. Click the photo below to follow along!