Wedding Invitations

sillysmiles

Does anyone else think the price of wedding invitations are mad!

What do you think is an acceptable price to pay for invitations?

January

Vistaprint... think I paid like 80 euro for 100 invitations.

oneway2

We got them all printed for free, we just had to pay for the blank card.

We did them at the GF's office late one Friday bank holiday weekend when no one was around (It might even have been Good Friday).

It was pretty strong cardboard and by the time we've got them all done, three laser printers were a bit wiffy, with the smell of toasted inerds.

We were a bit panicky that we're killed them, but they were fine again on Monday.

sillysmiles

oneway - did ye design your own then?

oneway2

sillysmiles wrote: »

oneway - did ye design your own then?

Yeah. No biggie, I think it was Microsoft Word, some classy fonts and a bit of trial and error, turning it upside down for the inside text etc. All a bit of a laugh.

bee06

I got mine on vistaprint as well. I think it was 100 euro for 100. They always have sales, special offers etc so I kept an eye out for them.

sillysmiles

Thanks folk. I ended up going with brideandgroomdirect.
I just wanted it done as we want to start posting them by the end of April/start of May. Missed the sale on the invite we liked by a few days. But it's done now. Time to move on to the next bit!

Milly33

It all depends on what you want really. Glad you got sorted...if your anyway crafty do it yourself but be prepared to have a few weeks of ahhh this is annoying

Gatica

well, if you go for hand-crafted ones it wouldn't be surprising that they'd be highly priced and IMO over the top for what they're for. However, having done our own invitations, which weren't even that complicated, I can see why those in the business would charge 3-5 E apiece.
If you're creative, make your own and you'll save a load. However, you'll need to be careful with your budgeting cos all bits and pieces that you'll need, such as tools, can all add up as well.
Easiest is simple printed invites, from the likes of Vistaprint. We used them for thank you cards.

Milly33

have to say I agree with gatica, after spending just one night punching envelopes to pretty them up to send out it isn't a easy task. my hands and arms are so sore... And again fine I had the tools to do it but if you didn't you would nearly end up spending the same amount doing them youselves as you would getting someone to do them

MadDog76

This thread has p****d me right off!!! :mad:

We paid 9 euros per invitation for our wedding and it wasn't a small wedding ......... my now wife and mother-in-law told me at the time that 9 euros was a bargain ......... WTF!!!!!!! :mad:

Toots

Good god! Did the invites deliver themselves or something?? For that price they'd want to!

stargazer 68

MadDog76 wrote: »

This thread has p****d me right off!!! :mad:

We paid 9 euros per invitation for our wedding and it wasn't a small wedding ......... my now wife and mother-in-law told me at the time that 9 euros was a bargain ......... WTF!!!!!!! :mad:

OMG were they gold plated?? :eek:

Milly33

Well now in fairness if you thought €9 was a bargain for invites unless as above they were gold plated and posted themselves, back and forth ye were mad to believe it was a bargain... Sure did ye not tot up how much card how much for this etc costs

MadDog76

Dovies wrote: »

OMG were they gold plated?? :eek:

They were "Gold Spun"? With "French Flap" envelopes?? And a load of other unexplained "things" which apparently justified the "bargain" price ..........

hotshots85

We just got ours done, nicely printed (gold lettering which couldn't do ourselves) great choice of designs and only worked out €3 per invite but got main invite, evening invite, thank you cards ands envelopes for that.

I was all for making our own but for that it seemed to be a good deal and take out some of the hassle

Let me know if anyone's wants the name of the place.

MadDog76

Milly33 wrote: »

Well now in fairness if you thought €9 was a bargain for invites unless as above they were gold plated and posted themselves, back and forth ye were mad to believe it was a bargain... Sure did ye not tot up how much card how much for this etc costs

My first (and hopefully only!) time getting married ........ I was surprised by the prices of a lot of wedding stuff so by the time we had our first consultation with our "Invitation Consultant/Designer" I was already resigned to unexpected (but perfectly "normal") prices being thrown at me.

Milly33

Ah sure lesson learned maddog, perhaps ye can make it up somewhere else.. No need to be stressing over it now unless they haven't been printed and you could go elsewhere

MadDog76

Milly33 wrote: »

Ah sure lesson learned maddog, perhaps ye can make it up somewhere else.. No need to be stressing over it now unless they haven't been printed and you could go elsewhere

We're a while married now so no chance to make it up elsewhere .......... been winding my wife up this morning as she comes clean with a few other hidden over-the-top expenses for our wedding, ie. "So remember you told me the Bridesmaids dresses cost x amount ......... how much were they really?" ......... ah well, it truly was a fantastic day and well-worth it but I'll let her squirm for a bit before telling her that!

Milly33

haha jes imagine if you did go back with them now saying you wanted a refund haha.. Well maybe they were more expensive back then.. Glad to hear ye had a great day and it was all worth it... Id be the other way I caught himself hiding the cost of a belt but then I was like sure tis worth it for a decant belt...

Uno my Uno.

Ours worked out at about €4 each including envelopes and rsvp cards etc and it was money well spent as far as I'm concerned. We were delighted with how they turned out and all our guests have loved them (not that they would say otherwise).

I considered designing or printing them myself but in the end decided that having them done properly was a better option as we knew they would be correct and perhaps more importantly, ready on time that way.

rainbow kirby

Vistaprint for us - with a discount code it cost us £68 for 50 invitations and 50 RSVP cards. About another £35 on postage because most of ours were going to Ireland.

westernlass

Minted.com is worth checking out. very reasonable

fits

westernlass wrote: »

Minted.com is worth checking out. very reasonable

I got mine from there too. Got a black friday deal so worked out about 350 euro for foil pressed invites, rsvp cards and thank you cards.

Liam McPoyle

We are getting ours from Daintree on Camden St.

IIRC it's 70 invites + envelopes, 30 RSVP cards ( these are for people that aren't net savvy, otherwise it's an RSVP email) and I think 20 evening invites + envelopes.

All in it's around €350.

We could have gotten it cheaper with self assembly but the saving vs the inevitible pain in the face putting them together wasn't worth it.

We had budgeted €500 for them so are happy enough.

Milly33

Yeah happy days just got ours yesterday 70 invites with a few extra €30!! wow delighted with them. Picked up the envelopes in the pound shop and decorated them they were €2.99 and .99c for the RSVP cards.

streetcar

We (I) did ours ourselves.
For the time and effort put into it, I was only mildly happy with the result but other people seemed to like it. I thought doing myself would be easier, but looking back, I think you have to be very clear on what you want to achieve and be realistic with your expectations for results.

Tips for any lurkers or people planning their wedding soon:

Vistaprint is not a bad option - have a look.
There are a few sites that will let you set up a wedding website pretty easily and they have matching invitations - some of them are quite Pinterest/Etsy style so it could be a good option.
Think about things like - will you have a wedding website or an email address - i.e. how will people RSVP. We sent a postcard so there was no facility for people to post things back to us. We heard from friends that you don't get the responses and end up texting / emailing people to find out if they are coming. So we have tried a website and mobile for our responses. Expecting responses in the next couple of weeks, so we'll see how that goes

If you are going to get our invites from Etsy / Pinterest - give yourself plenty of time. Getting the invites organised is one headache, the second is finalising the guestlist. If the two collide (and because one is linked to another, there is already a certain degree of crossover on the two tasks), it can be very annoying. So after helping with a few weddings and organising my own, I would advise you to get the invites designed and ordered as early as you can.

Some people say the invites can set the tone of the wedding. Fair enough if they are poorly designed or have a general lack of effort. But I can honestly say that from my point of view, the invites that I remember the most are the ones that were simple and not overly elaborate (that's if i remember what someone's invite was like at all!).
YOU care about the invite (which is fair enough) but realistically, people just want to know if they are invited, the time and date of the event and where it is on! There are no awards handed out for invites.

An Bhanríon

I would agree that it is worth having a long think about whether it's worth doing invitations yourself. We did ours ourselves and, while I wouldn't have had it any other way myself, it took a long time to get through them - around 150!!! For the sake of a few hundred quid, I think, in general, it is worth sparing the effort.

Initially it can seem like a lovely idea to do your own invitations and you can get carried away with lovely ideas. But the reality is the whole thing takes time. And you will have spent time already compiling a list of addresses (unless you are superorganised and keep an up to date address book!), which can take plenty of time too.

The reason it was worth it for us to do the invitations ourselves was that I (!!) had a very clear idea of what I wanted. This was not tying in with any wedding invitations I had seen before and I, rightly or wrongly, thought it would be expensive to get someone to design it. The other reason was I needed to learn a design software for work, so this was a chance to do a project using that software before I used it for real in my work! We were lucky also that family members had all the tools we needed to cut and fold the card.

We ended up at €200 for invitations (full day and afters), envelopes, ink for printer, stamps and thank you cards. So money-wise it's not an enormous saving. (Although most figures above don't include stamps - for those compiling a budget for the invitations, don't forget to factor in the postage stamps!)

zl1whqvjs75cdy

Never get the obsession with super fancy wedding invites. It arrives, I check the time and date, put the details in my phone and then bin the invitation. Sits in my house for all of about 15 minutes (or however long it takes me to get to the post in the evening.)

fits

donkeyoaty0099 wrote: »

Never get the obsession with super fancy wedding invites. It arrives, I check the time and date, put the details in my phone and then bin the invitation. Sits in my house for all of about 15 minutes (or however long it takes me to get to the post in the evening.)

Well i do think you can communicate a lot about the day through the invite. We put lots of info on the back of ours. And the colours match the bridesmaid so the women know what not to wear. I agree spending a fortune is mad but its nice if they're nice. The base price for ours was $2.60. And we got 25% off with black friday. And they were very nice. We had to pay 40 euro import duty.

Uno my Uno.

donkeyoaty0099 wrote: »

Never get the obsession with super fancy wedding invites. It arrives, I check the time and date, put the details in my phone and then bin the invitation. Sits in my house for all of about 15 minutes (or however long it takes me to get to the post in the evening.)

I Think most people pay a little more attention to them than that, it might only be that they sit on the mantle piece for a little while but people do appreciate a nicely done invite. It can also give a good indication of what the tone of a wedding will be like, traditional and formal, relaxed and friendly or quirky and different.

Like others here I think its nice to have a good looking well done invite but I wouldn't go over board, its not worth it.

Milly33

Have to say women do pay attention, men don't. Id say the only way a man would pay attention to an invite and keep it would be if it arrived in a subaru or tank something like that

An Bhanríon

Mine all end up on the mantelpiece from the time they arrive to the date of the wedding. Then they go into my memory box. Some of us do take notice! I love my collection of wedding invitations...

Uno my Uno.

Milly33 wrote: »

Have to say women do pay attention, men don't. Id say the only way a man would pay attention to an invite and keep it would be if it arrived in a subaru or tank something like that

I'm a man and I notice! and I picked ours and I wrote and laid out the text!

BnB

donkeyoaty0099 wrote: »

Never get the obsession with super fancy wedding invites. It arrives, I check the time and date, put the details in my phone and then bin the invitation. Sits in my house for all of about 15 minutes (or however long it takes me to get to the post in the evening.)

Couldn't agree more. Mother of God, the poor fella who's wife talked him into paying €9 a pop - What were they thinking...????

It comes in the post - You look at it for 5 seconds and throw it somewhere - Then the night before the wedding you spend half an hour looking for it to find out what time the church is on at. You fail, and text someone to find out. And it turns up 4 years later when you are trying to reach a Thomas the Tank Engine that is stuck under the fridge.

Of course your wedding day is special and you want it to be memorable for you and your guests. But if you are going to spend time and money, spend it on something that will actually make a difference to you or your guests like a nice guna, food & wine, a good band, a nice honeymoon....etc.. but invitations.... no one gives a toot

Milly33

Uno my Uno. wrote: »

I'm a man and I notice! and I picked ours and I wrote and laid out the text!

Ah but that was your own how many other wedding invites do you have collected, or taken note of. Himself done ours also and put a lot of time and effort into them but I know for a fact he wouldn't have taken notice unless it was our own

Uno my Uno.

Milly33 wrote: »

Ah but that was your own how many other wedding invites do you have collected, or taken note of. Himself done ours also and put a lot of time and effort into them but I know for a fact he wouldn't have taken notice unless it was our own

I keep most of them although I don't paste them into scrap books.

I was just pointing out that its not fair to paint us all with the same brush.;););)

Milly33

You the Man Uno!

Toots

I made my own and had a theme for the invites, booklets and thankyou cards. The materials cost me about €40 at most. I got 2 boxes of cream coloured cards with envelopes, then got a couple of reams of plain A4 for the inside of the booklets, and 120 sheets of this fancy textured cream card for the booklet covers.

I used MS Publisher. When my husband proposed he did it with a bunch of roses, and there were 4 different colours. I pressed one of each colour, so for the invites I scanned each one and used it on the cover, and also on the booklets and thank you cards. The invites and thank you cards were straight forward enough. It took me a couple of tries just to make sure I put the card in the printer the right way when I was printing front and back, but Publisher pretty much guides you through it.

The mass booklets were slightly more complicated; I did an actual 'book' as in there were multiple pages, so that did take a bit of figuring out as regards print layout. What we ended up doing was getting all the pages and the cover printed out, then we roped in my hubby's sister (one of my bridesmaids) and we all sat down and had a production line going; each person grabbed the next pages as they passed the booklet along, and the last person would add the cover and then staple it. We borrowed a long arm stapler off my husband's mum, and we got them all done in one night, then had a few beers afterwards. This is how they turned out, if anyone is interested http://omg.wthax.org/7YXJSL.jpg

I really enjoy doing stuff like that, but if you aren't great with printing, or get easily frustrated then I wouldn't recommend it.

Arbiter of Good Taste

We went with simple invites with a celtic design. I cant remember the website, but I was very happy. Cost €110

Arbiter of Good Taste

Milly33 wrote: »

Have to say women do pay attention, men don't. Id say the only way a man would pay attention to an invite and keep it would be if it arrived in a subaru or tank something like that

I'm a woman and never pay attention to wedding invitations. Generally end up in the bin after the wedding

Malari

fits wrote: »

Well i do think you can communicate a lot about the day through the invite. We put lots of info on the back of ours. And the colours match the bridesmaid so the women know what not to wear..

Lol! I never knew I was being subtly dissuaded from wearing a certain colour based on the invite!

fits

Malari wrote: »

Lol! I never knew I was being subtly dissuaded from wearing a certain colour based on the invite!

There you are now. Recent news to me also but the in law women picked up on it alright.

Tarzana2

fits wrote: »

Well i do think you can communicate a lot about the day through the invite. We put lots of info on the back of ours. And the colours match the bridesmaid so the women know what not to wear.

While I knew that the invites often indicate the colour of the bridesmaids dresses, I'm not keen on it being a subtle hint not to wear that colour. Many people don't buy new outfits for every wedding and I'd hate the thought of someone feeling they had to go out an buy something new to not match the bridesmaids.

Toots

I never knew the invites had the same colours as the bridesmaids dresses! God help my guests, they'd never have guessed lol! I don't think I'd give a crap if someone turned up in the same colour as the bridesmaids, once it wasn't the exact same dress. That happened at my SIL's wedding (the BM dresses were from Coast) and one of the cousins turned up in the exact same dress; she was mortified and luckily lived near the church, so she nipped home to change on the way to the reception.

Vojera

We paid about €160 for 100 invitations on pearlescent card, and stamps for them. We were very lucky in that our artist friend designed our invitations for us and then took care of all the printing for us.

I helped out a friend with a mass booklet assembly line before and I didn't want to do something similar myself, although if she hadn't left it till the night before the wedding I probably wouldn't have found it so panicky!

Tarzana2

Vojera wrote: »

We paid about €160 for 100 invitations on pearlescent card, and stamps for them. We were very lucky in that our artist friend designed our invitations for us and then took care of all the printing for us.

I looove pearlescent card. My sister didn't have the invitation pearlescent but the envelopes were. Sooo pretty. Her husband's sister is an artist and made the wedding invitations for them as her wedding gift!

jimmii

Vojera wrote: »

We paid about €160 for 100 invitations on pearlescent card, and stamps for them. We were very lucky in that our artist friend designed our invitations for us and then took care of all the printing for us.

I helped out a friend with a mass booklet assembly line before and I didn't want to do something similar myself, although if she hadn't left it till the night before the wedding I probably wouldn't have found it so panicky!

Thats obviously super cheap for that sure the stamps would have cost €68! Getting small numbers of cards like that is quite expensive.

Toots

Vojera wrote: »

I helped out a friend with a mass booklet assembly line before and I didn't want to do something similar myself, although if she hadn't left it till the night before the wedding I probably wouldn't have found it so panicky!

God that sounds like a nightmare! When we did it we got a takeaway and a few beers and stuck on a film, so it was pretty relaxed. When my husband's brother got married years ago, the groom, my husband, and the two other brothers were still assembling the booklets in the car on the way to the church on the morning of the wedding!

Vojera

Tarzana2 wrote: »

I looove pearlescent card. My sister didn't have the invitation pearlescent but the envelopes were. Sooo pretty. Her husband's sister is an artist and made the wedding invitations for them as her wedding gift!

I know, I love it too. I would have everything in pearlescent paper if I could! It brings me back to my fancy paper collector days :pac:

jimmii wrote: »

Thats obviously super cheap for that sure the stamps would have cost €68! Getting small numbers of cards like that is quite expensive.

I think our stamps were €60 (they were 55c each at the time, plus a few European stamps) but honestly I think we probably got a good rate as our friend would have used the printer a fair bit for his work and his art. We were lucky!

Toots wrote: »

God that sounds like a nightmare! When we did it we got a takeaway and a few beers and stuck on a film, so it was pretty relaxed. When my husband's brother got married years ago, the groom, my husband, and the two other brothers were still assembling the booklets in the car on the way to the church on the morning of the wedding!

OMG at that stage I think I would just fling them in the boot and pretend there were no booklets! I wouldn't be able for that at all!

Also, good idea with the long arm stapler - we were sewing my friends ones together at 11pm and cursing every pricked finger as we went!

Gatica

fits wrote: »

Well i do think you can communicate a lot about the day through the invite. We put lots of info on the back of ours. And the colours match the bridesmaid so the women know what not to wear.

I would've never thought that before... We did our invites in the colour OH's favourite sports team, it wasn't anything at all like the bridesmaid's colour.
I also don't understand this seemingly prevalent attitude that you can't wear the colour of the bridesmaids or the wedding theme, etc... As long as no one else turns out wearing what could be confused as a wedding dress, I think adults should be "allowed" to wear whatever they like.
We had lots of the groom's side of the family wearing wedding colours, and to be honest it didn't bother me in the least, if anything it looks quite nice in pictures.