When my husband and I started planning our wedding in 2016 I was surprised by some of the hidden (and not so hidden!) costs of planning a wedding. I thought it would be easy to plan a wedding for less than $20,000 but learned how quickly things add up!
Now that most of my clients are couples planning their weddings, I’ve learned that sometimes there can be a sticker shock that comes when I send a formal quote to them for custom wedding stationery. This blog post is to give a little insight into what the costs of wedding stationery can be and gives a few examples of what you could spend on it!
What percent of my wedding budget should be for wedding invitations?
As a base and according to brides.com couples should expect to spend 4-6% of their budget of their overall budget for wedding invitations. For a $25,000 wedding that would range from $1,000 to $1,500. I trust your math skills to calculate it for what your overall budget is!
For those of you planning less formal, intimate weddings, it makes sense that your invitations could be more informal and simple. If you are hosting a more formal event, which tends to be more expensive, you should be spending more on your wedding invitations so that the invitation gives a more formal, elegant impression.
What is one good way I can get an idea of how much my wedding invitations will cost?
The main thing I tell brides to look at first is their guest list. Are you having a more intimate wedding or throwing a large wedding? The more invitations you need, the more you need to budget.
What are the variables that make some wedding invitations extremely expensive?
Going into planning a budget for wedding invitations can be hard because there are so many details that go into stationery. The range in price for wedding stationery changes depending on the printing process you choose (read more on the differences of printing processes here), if you choose to have a thicker stock paper or handmade paper for your invitations, or what add-ons you choose to have for your invitations (all those pretty things like vintage postage, envelope addressing, belly bands, vellum wraps, etc!).
Take these variables into account and then when you have a larger number of households that you are mailing invitations to, your budget may balloon up to more than you thought possible! There is good news though. There are a lot of ways to save on wedding invitations and I will get into that next…
How to save on wedding invitations:
If you are really aiming to keep your budget low but also want to have beautiful wedding stationery, we completely understand! There are some great ways to combine elegant design with a couple extra details that won’t bust your wedding budget. Here are some tips on how to save money when deciding on wedding invitations:
Choose a semi-custom suite to save on the custom design cost but still have a design from someone whose work you love!
One of my favorite things that I always encourage brides to opt for in their wedding stationery is vintage postage. Why? Well, it seems like it would be very expensive (and it can be if you are dying for a specific, rare stamp but in all truth, you can find vintage postage for just about 20% more than you would spend at the post office for Forever Stamps). Read more about vintage postage here and my tips for finding it here.
If you calculate the cost difference between forever stamps (50 cents per piece v. a vintage postage set you curate, the cost could be only around 10 cents more for those really special stamps!).
If you are mailing to 100 households, that cost difference is $10!! Searching for vintage postage can take some time and is a labor of love.
Make a wedding website that can host all the additional details that you might have rather put in extra insert cards in your wedding invitations. From a list of accommodations , map, or extra details card – it is super easy to just include these on a website and guests LOVE spending time on your website, getting to know you more as a couple and looking forward to your big day.
If you have any more questions about wedding invitations and costs, please feel free to reach out! There are so many ways to make budgets work but still have a stunning invitation suite to send to your family and friends.
All my best,
Maddy Kelly
