Invitations

When I first started planning the wedding, I didn't care too much about invitations. Its just a piece of paper that eventually gets thrown away, right?

So I decided that I would just use Vistaprint deals and make our invitations that way. I created a few, but none of them were really what I wanted. They didn't have the color options or designs I wanted, and after the issues I had trying to create a monogram, I didn't want to upload an entire file as the invitation.

Then I started stalking knottie bio's and googling. I found the wonderful world of pocketfolds and knew I had to have them. But they were a bit expensive. For about 3 months I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I wanted pocketfolds, but I wasn't sure if I could justify that type of expense on well...paper.

I googled for a long time, searching every website that sold cardstock and pocketfolds to make sure that I could find the best deal possible. http://www.cardsandpockets.com/ had the best prices for the colors and style I wanted.

I'm kind of strange when it comes to paper. Well, anything office-supply related. I get really excited when stores put out the back to school supplies and there are tons and tons of pens, pencils, markers, post-it notes and other stuff on sale. I could honestly spend 2 or more hours in an office supply store, just looking at all of the stuff there. Sometimes I think I missed my calling as a school teacher, just so I could buy that stuff every year.

When I got an email from cardsandpockets.com that they were having a fall sale and saw a post on the DIY board that those sales were super rare, I made the decision to order pocketfolds.

I checked the guest list again and it turned out we needed 29 invitations. Of course, most pre-packaged items come in quantities of 25 or more. So I did have get higher quantites than I needed, but I figure at least I can definitely mess up a few times without having to order more. I also wanted to have extra invitations so we could keep one and send an extra set to our parents if they wanted them.

Here is the breakdown:

40 Signature Pocketfolds in Pine               $0.98 each              $39.20
2 packs of 25 qty. Blank Invitations           $5.00 each              $10.00
3 packs of 25 qty. Blank Enclosures          $4.98 each              $14.94
2 packs of 25 qty. RSVP Cards                  $4.00 each              $ 8.00
50 RSVP envelopes                                   $0.11 each              $ 5.25

I had purchased 55 outer envelopes for the RSVP's from another knottie on the Trash to Treasure board for $6. Because the sale was for everything, I also ordered cardstock to back our menu's.

25 Pack 8x11 Pine Cardstock                                $5.25
25 Pack 8x11 Pansy Cardstock                              $4.99

The cardsandpockets.com total for the invite pieces and cardstock was $87.88. The sale was 25% off which deducted $21.88 from the price. Shipping was $9.40. Total: $75.40

So, the total for everything related to the invitations, the cost is $83.39

Unfortunately, this does mean that before postage (and excluding the stamps and ink pad I bought), each invitation is costing me $2.61. I know that is pretty un-budget friendly. However, I did price out what it would cost us for premade invitations, or ones where you print your specific information, and the ones I found decent enough varied from $0.08 less or $1.24 more per invite.

Maybe I'm just a paper snob. Who knows. :( But, even though its a lot of money, I'm getting the invitations I really want and we're still under budget.