Wedding Invitations

Our wedding invitations have been sent out over the past couple of weeks and I’m pretty relieved, to say the least. We’ve started to receive some responses too, which is great, as it means we’re that much closer to figuring out seating plans and hotel guests, all of which makes things a little less stressful. I thought I’d bring you up-to-date on the process of designing and printing the invitations and what I’ve learned from the experience so far.

I knew I was going to design our invitations, pretty much from the beginning of thinking about them. Not because I think I have an amazing talent, more because I knew it was a more cost effective option, and I was decent at Photoshop. We’d long along picked our wedding colours, so I figured them into the mix when I started designing and just took a bit of inspiration from places like Pinterest and Minted. They didn’t take long and we were both pleased with the result, so we went to Vistaprint to get them printed out. What you can’t see here is the back of the pieces, which all have a mint green and white spotted design – very simple, but I knew I didn’t want to leave them plain.

Printing them through a reputable company was reasonable in terms of cost and meant that the quality was perfect for what we wanted. We also ensured that the Reply cards and the Information cards were half the size of the invitations themselves, so we were able to print two to each page. That saved us some money, which was great, but meant a lot of cutting out once they arrived!

We decided to include a Response card (including a mini stamped envelope with our address printed on the front for easy return) was one of the best decisions we made when it came to the invitations – we have been receiving responses left, right and centre, simply because we’ve made it as easy as possible for people to let us know whether they will be attending. One thing I really didn’t want to have to do in the lead up to the wedding was chase people to find out if they were coming – those were conversations I didn’t want to have – so I’m glad we included these and made the whole process much less stressful.

We also included an information card, containing the address for our wedding website. I am happy to answer questions people might have about the wedding, but it made sense for us to direct people to the one place that pretty much contains all the information you’d need about it – a little about us, accommodation choices, gift information, etc.

A few top tips I’d have for anyone going through this process:

• Send out your invitations as early as possible – advice on this varies, but as we’re getting married in the summer, I wanted to make sure that people could make plans as soon as they could. The wedding is also located a couple of hours from most our guests, so it was also important that people had enough time to make travel plans. We sent ours out about 4 and a half months before the big day, which just felt right, and we’ve given people a month to respond, so we can start counting numbers and making alternative arrangements for those unable to make it.
• Include as much information as possible, or lead people to the right place. I considered putting a full information card in with the invites, containing a map, a list of accommodation, etc. but it seemed easier and more cost effective to set up a free wedding website and put all vital information on there. I think it’s proving pretty useful for our guests and it means they can start to get excited for the big day along with us.
• Try to include response cards. I know people can pick up wedding invite reply cards in shops these days, but that takes effort, when you add in stamping and addressing an envelope, so we decided to take that task off people’s hands, so that they simply need to pop their names on the card and find a postbox. Easy. It’s working so far, so I’d definitely recommend going down this route if you can.
• Print spares. Always over estimate the amount of invitations you’ll need – if people are unable to attend and you can fill spaces, you need spare invitations to send out. I know it’s a bit of an extra cost, but you can also display a spare in your home and take one with you on your big day for your photographer to take a shot of. Keep it sensible though, don’t order double what you need, just a few extras.