Invitations: Cost

Anyone want to take a guess as to how much our invitations cost? Lower. Lower. Still lower. You'll never guess.

Design: $0.00
 - Designed it ourselves
 - I can't even begin to guess how much it would cost for a graphic designer.

Labor: $0.00
 - Did it ourselves myself, mostly
 - You don't even want to know how many hours have gone into printing, cutting, punch, gluing, etc. went into this. I would be rich if I even charged myself minimum wage.

Postage: $107.55 (rsvp - $0.44/each, domestic - $0.88/each, 3 international, 5 sent in one package to be hand delivered to family, 4 hand delivered locally, and one for a keepsake)
 - I already knew that because of the shape (square), our invites would be slightly more. But I was crossing my fingers in hopes that they didn't tip the scales. Thank god they didn't!

Reusable materials: approximately $100 (after discounts and taxes, but not rolling this into the final cost)
 - White gel pen used for the "please recycle" message
 - Stamps of our graphic (Purchased from Paper Source. We have both the large and the small one (two for whatever reason my bridal brain came up with back in December of 2009!)
 - ColorBox Pigment Stamp pads in black and scarlett
 - VersaMarkStamp pad
 - Clear embossing powder
 - Paper punches (border and corner)
 - Embossing heat gun
 - PVA glue (left over from lord only knows what project)
 - Printer and ink. I got this printer at 50% off waaaaay back when.
 - Font

Raw Materials: $76.11!!!!
 - This amount does not include shipping as other paper products were also ordered at this time. All paper was ordered from Paper and More. I highly reccommend them!
 - 12x12 100# cardstock in black for the enclosure
 - 8.5x11 100# cardstock in cherry red for the invitation and name card backing
 - 8.5x11 80# cardstock in bright white for the invitation, information card, rsvp card, and name card
 - 4 bar envelopes in bright white
 - 6x6 square envelopes in bright white
 - 96.75 yards of twine. Barely made a dent in my giant spool of twine.

Grand total: $183.66
 - Each invitation suite cost just over $0.88!!! $0.885 to be exact!!!
 - $2.20 including all postage for invites shipped within the USA. Can you believe that?!?!  The postage was the bulk of it!
 - Paula told me that our invites could have easily run $1300 if we had a real staionary vendor do them.


45 days.

Invitations: The guts

Every day after work, I rush into the apartment hoping to find more RSVPs waiting for me. It's like having mini presents to open everyday. Well kind of. It's exciting regardless.

We got 5 RSVPs in one day! This was the third day in a
row that we had them in the mailbox. No stalkers please.

Now that I think everyone has received their invites, I think it's time to share them with the internet. You ready for the reveal? First up, the envelopes. They are kind of plain on the outside, but it's what's on the inside that counts right? I had grand plans to embellish the envelopes but got lazy. Names and addresses were printed on my Epson R1900. The font is Monterey BT.

We didn't print, stamp, or use wrap-around labels for the return address. Instead, we used our handy-dandy address embosser. I was a little bit afraid that if an invitation had to be returned, it would get lost in the mail. But, so far so good.

You ready to tear into the envelope yet? Guests were greeted with a red and white polka dot liner. Want to know a secret? That liner is wrapping paper that I cut up and glued in. Our invitations were strategically placed so that the backside was facing up. I did this for two reasons. 1) The envelopes were kind of thin. I didn't want the embellishments potentially causing a tear. 2) So that the "please recycle" message was received.

Turn the invitation around and you get, personalization. Each invited guest had their name printed on the invite. The embellishment I mentioned above is the baker's twine that I used in lieu of a pocketfold. The goal was to minimize paper and weight of the total invitation package.  

Let's take a closer look at the details, shall we?



 

The names are in Kon Tiki Enchanted. See the faint outline behind the names? That is actually an embossed stamp of the graphic we picked for the wedding. You can kind of see that the twine is flush with the edge of the cardstock in the photo below. A edge paper punch was used to make just enough of a notch to keep the twine in place.

Now for the real guts of the invites: the actual invitation, the information card, and the rsvp card. Sorry for not posting a close up of the invitation card itself. Not much to see after bluring out our names and dates. Our names are in Kon Tiki Enchanted and everything else is in Century Gothic.

More embossed craziness.

The information card. Since most of our guests are from out of state, we chose to make our wedding a weekend affair and invite everyone to all the events. We are hoping that this will give us more time to catch up with folks rather than trying to squeeze it all in the day of. Headers and website are in Kon Tiki enchanted and details are in Century Gothic.

RSVP cards and return envelope. Since it was just coming back to us, I decided not to add embellishments.

The card is folded card. I have never been a fan of traditional rsvp card verbiage for names. I also tend to think that people get confused by M__________. So I changed it. It's pretty straight to the point if you ask me. Let me tell you, printing this card so that the graphics bled to the edge of the paper was a big pain in my backside. I fiddled with my printer settings for a good two hours before it came out right. Let's not count how many test sheets of paper I had to use.

The entire suite together.

Everything you see here was handmade from blank cardstock, with the exception of the envelopes.

Next up, the cost breakdown. I'm curious to see how much it actually cost me us.

50 days.