Many couples are looking for information on wedding costs and how to make weddings more affordable. One thing that many couples wonder about is wedding invitation costs… how much can they expect to pay for wedding invitation sets?
In this first in a series of blog posts about ways to make your wedding more affordable without skimping on quality or class, I will discuss a hot topic: What can you expect to pay for wedding invitations? Invitations are one of the most important aspects of your wedding. After all, without invitations, you’d have no guests to attend the wedding! So, they are pretty important!
We all know that no matter how you slice it, weddings can be expensive events in our lives, no matter what our budgets are. They just are. Unless you are planning to get married at City Hall by a Justice of the Peace, you are going to have to spend some amount of money. How much money you spend on the various areas that hold spots on your wedding budget is up to you.
Whether you are throwing a lavish dream wedding fit for royalty, or you are having an informal barbecue in your back yard, one of the costs to consider is the cost of wedding invitations sets (or kits).
Since you’ll want all your family and friends to attend your wedding, they’ll need to be invited, so let’s discuss the cost of those.
Depending on which wedding budget source you use, the amount they suggest for using as a guide is about 2-6% of your total wedding budget. So, for a $10,000 wedding budget, your goal would be to keep your wedding stationery costs between $200-$600, which is intended to cover your invitations and enclosure cards, wedding programs, and thank you cards.
That 10K allows for roughly $100 being spent per head for 100 guests (or apprx. 50 invitations), or $2-$6 per guest on paper goods.
Personally, I find those percentages very low if wedding programs AND thank you cards are supposed to be included. Unless you plan on running off wedding programs at home, I think you’ll be hard pressed to find decent looking folding programs for less than $1 each and that would be for low grade paper, so right there you’ve spent $100. Let’s use Lemon Leaf Prints for an example. Lemon Leaf Prints is an affordable online invitation stationery company. For 50 Lemon Leaf Prints wedding invitations with RSVP cards and envelopes for both, you’ll need to spend about $300+, so there’s 3% of your 10K wedding budget gone. Tack on another $100 for wedding programs and that doesn’t leave you much for save the dates, thank you cards, enclosure cards, or postage.
I think realistically, it would be better to budget 5-8% for paper goods and then if you are able to get them for much less, you can add the savings to another area. I would hate to see you have to skimp on a wedding thank you card, especially with the beautiful photo template type ones that are available now, thanks to digital photography.
Some people with very deep pockets can afford to pay $40 per single boxed invitation and then have them couriered to their recipient. Others can pay $10 per invitation with embellishments like ribbons and bows and such, but let’s face it, those people would not be searching online for ways to cut out costs or caring about how much to spend on invitations. They’ll be hiring wedding planners to the stars and just writing a vast amount of very large checks. Sure, being able to afford everything just as you’ve dreamt it would be wonderful, but chances are high that if you are reading this, you know the value of a dollar and are looking for ways to get the most bang for your buck. If that’s you, then stay tuned for other other “affordable wedding” blog posts for some great ideas to get the dream look without the nightmare cost.
I always cringe when I hear of couples that go into debt to throw an out-of-their-means wedding, hoping and praying that they’ll be able to pay most of it off with the cash they’ll receive as gifts. This is entirely the wrong approach to take as it’s setting up the start of your married life in debt. Since everyone knows the biggest argument that couples have is about money, why would you want to have that black cloud of debt hanging over your head during the blissful post-wedding months? If you can’t pay for things as you go, then it’s time to rethink your wedding plans and cut out unnecessary things that you can live without.
In the rest of this series on blog posts, I’ll discuss ways to save on wedding stationery, such as save the date invitations, wedding invitation sets, and thank you cards. I’ll also be discussing other ways to save big on your wedding costs.
To help you with better planning your wedding costs, you can print off a free Wedding Cost Checklist courtesy of Lemon Leaf Prints.
About Vicki at NiteOwlStudio
Vicki is the owner and Graphic Designer of the online business NiteOwl Studio Inc. which specializes in all occasion paper goods for all of life's great milestone events, including weddings, anniversaries, sweet sixteens, quinceaneras, bat/bar mitzvahs, birthdays, graduations, and bridal showers. In addition to the special occasion stationery collections, Vicki also enjoys designing unique and affordable personalized gifts and accessories for everyday use. Working with clients on custom designs is also something that Vicki finds very rewarding, often working throughout the night until the design is exactly how a client wants it, hence the name NiteOwl Studio.