DIY – Do It Yourself is becoming a very popular mantra in the wedding industry, particularly in our current economic situation.  Although we are a wedding planning company, we do encourage couples to DIY to save money if they have time to plan their own weddings.  Although professional vendors will be able to provide you with better quality work and more experience, if an aspect of your wedding isn’t as vital, try to cut some corners to save money.  Planning Elegance’s blog will provide you with a new tip each month to help you save some cash for your wedding.  March’s topic is DIY Wedding Invitations.

To print or not to print…that is the question!  Many brides will come across the dilemma of whether printing their own invitations is worth the effort or not.  If you have sufficient time before your wedding, then you will save tons of money by creating your own invitations.  Don’t forget that when you buy invitations from an outside vendor, you need to get matching envelopes, RSVPs, Thank-You Cards, and sometimes even programs from them, which can add up to shelling out big bucks.

You can purchase basic, fancy stationary from Target or Office Depot.  Find something that you like for your wedding and download a template from the stationary company’s website.  You can load this stationary into your printer, create some wording (who, what, where when, why…) for your wedding invitation on your computer, fold the invitations and RSVP cards, then stuff them into envelopes, address the envelopes, and mail them out.  It’s as easy as that!  Plus, if you get some extra hands the folding and stuffing envelopes will go so much faster and you’ll be ready to send out your wedding invitations in no time.

Many couples include a picture in their wedding invitations.  This is an easy way to save!  If you get a friend that enjoy photography or search Craigslist.com for a photographer that’s looking for unpaid models, you may be able to get your engagement photo shoot for free.  If your wedding photographer includes this in your package, you can either ask for print credit or ask to switch it out with another service or product that you need from them.  Whoever ends up shooting your engagement photos, ensure you get the rights to the pictures so that you can print them out at your leisure.  Take your files to Walgreens or Target to print them out and you can search for coupon codes online to save some money.

Another way to personalize your invitation and make it special is to add real flowers to it.  Grow some of your favorite flowers in your backyard or purchase day-old flowers from a grocery store.  Dry to flowers out in the sun, then flatten them in a phone book for a few days.  After this, the flowers will be extremely fragile, but can be glued to your invitation, or simple placed in the envelope you are sending them in.  This is a beautiful way to make yoru home-made invitations look beautiful without paying too much for flowers or labor.

Think about how much time and effort goes into creating DIY wedding invitations before you commit to sucha time consuming task.  Make sure that you have enough time before your wedding to make and mail out the invitations as well as get help from your bridesmaids, mom, or family to assemble, envelope, address, and send out the invitations.  Enjoy DIY Wedding Invitations and don’t forget DIY Save-The-Dates to save even more money on your wedding expenses.

Image of DIY Wedding Stationary from Bride’s Treasures and image of pressed flower invitation from Elizabeth’s Flowers.