Wedding Flowers

Your wedding invitation will be the first thing that your guests see from your wedding.  It may be displayed for weeks on their mantelpiece, and will probably be one of the things that they keep as a memento of sharing your special day, perhaps even ending up in a frame.   They should reflect your sense of style, personality, and theme of your wedding.   There are endless choices in designs for wedding invitations, from traditional and classic to bold and modern.

Although professionally printed, personalized wedding stationery can often be expensive, with a bit of creativity it is easy to make your own wedding and bridal shower invitations.  As well as saving your wedding budget, creating your own wedding invitations can be a fun process to share with your fiancé or bridesmaids. Your design will be unique to you, and your guests will know that their wedding invitation was handmade by you, making it even more special.

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Postage for your wedding invitations can make up a substantial chunk of your budget, but there are some things you can do to keep this cost to a minimum.

If you are trying to post your wedding invitations on a budget, then you should keep this in mind when choosing your style of invitations.  Obviously, the heavier the invitation, the more expensive it will be to post, so try to reduce the weight as much as possible.  Choose invitations that are printed in light cardstock, or have velum overlays, as these will be lighter than heavy French-fold or three-fold designs.   Avoid invitations with too many heavy embellishments.  You can also drastically cut the weight of your invitations by not using an inner envelope.  Only using one envelope will also cut down on waste, and you can feel good about helping the environment.

Keep enclosures such as maps and response cards to a minimum, or leave them out altogether and create a wedding website to show guests all of the information and manage replies.  If you and your guests are particularly internet savvy, you could even consider saving the cost of postage completely by sending out e-invites.  More than just emails, web invitations can be beautiful web pages with all of the elegance and flowing script of a printed invitation, with extra features such as photographs, music and flash animations.

There is often an extra charge to mail irregular shaped envelopes, so avoid square invitations.  You should also avoid cards with 3D embellishments such as knotted ribbon bows, decoupage and multiple folds, and these may not be able to pass through post office machines and will incur a surcharge.  The cheapest you can send your invitations is to keep them within the following dimensions:

• Rectangular in shape.
• Between 3.5 and 6 inches higher and between 5 and 11.5 inches long.
• No thicker than ¼” thick
• Weighing under 3.5 ounces.

Buying your stamps all at once can take a big hit on your budget balance.  Try to save stamps through the year leading up to your wedding.  Ask for donations of stamps from your friends and family, or put them on your bridal shower registry list.  Make it fun by challenging your girlfriends to find you the most romantic stamps that they can.  Even if the postage amount goes up by the time you actually send the invitations, it will be a lot less painful to your pocket to buy one hundred 2 cent stamps to make up the difference than paying the full postage amount in one go.

Take advantage of any special offers from online postage companies such as Stamps.com  These websites let you print postage from your computer, and often give you a bonus amount of postage free when you sign up.  Using a small scale to weigh your invitations will ensure that you pay the correct amount of postage.  Paying too much is a waste of money, but paying too little could mean having to resend all of your invitations, or worse, your guests may have to pay a charge to collect their invitation from the post office.

Deliver as many invitations as you can by hand.  If most of your guests are co-workers or people who live locally you may save on the majority of your postage costs.  Your guests will appreciate the personal approach and you will also get to visit with friends and chat about your wedding.   If you don’t have time to stop and spend time with everyone, then drop your invitations into your guests’ mailboxes at night.  They will have a nice surprise waiting for them when they get up the next morning.

Websites:
http://www.usps.com/
http://www.stamps.com/welcome/
https://sss-web.usps.com/cns/landing.do