Wedding Stationery Options

Do you hear that? The faint sound of wedding bells can be heard in your not-so-distant future. It’s time to start getting things in order and figuring out all the wedding details. There are so many things to keep track of, so many options to consider, it can be quite overwhelming. So before you go any further, take a deep breath. Now take another. Alright, now it’s time to get down to business. You’ve got the important details figured out already: the venue, date, and your spouse-to-be. Now you need to find the right stationery to announce your engagement and invite guests to various parties, including the wedding itself.

In order to let friends and family members know about an engagement and upcoming wedding, many couples choose to send out save the dates. They can be made from simple wedding stationery that matches the wedding invitations that will be sent later on. Or a popular trend is to send small, printed magnet save the dates containing the wedding date and a picture of the engaged couple. There are several parties that can be thrown before the wedding takes place including an engagement party, bridal shower, bachelorette party, and bachelor party. The invitations for each party do not need to match wedding invites and can be either formal or informal. Other pieces of stationery to consider include escort cards, programs, and menu cards for your wedding, which should match your wedding invitations.

The style of wedding invitations a couple chooses will give guests a glimpse of what to expect on the wedding day, including the overall vibe and level of formality. You should choose invites that incorporate any specific color combos or themes your wedding may have. It is important to search for invitations that suit the personality of both you and your fiancé. Traditional and simple designs are becoming a style of the past, making way for new modern and creative options. There is no shortage of design options to choose from. From those inspired by nature to hip, contemporary designs or a bit of vintage flair, you will surely be able to find something that is exactly what you envision.

Once you have found the perfect style, it’s time to make final choices regarding paper and ink options. If you are leaning toward a dark background, opt for a light colored ink, and vice versa. It is important to choose colors that do not require deciphering; you need guests to be able to clearly read wedding details. If your wedding is outdoors or incorporates natural elements, recycled paper invitations or seed-embedded invites printed with soy-based ink are great options to consider. Traditional cardstock invitations are slowly being replaced by new, more interesting options. Metallic/foil inks, varied weight cardstock, and embossed invitations are becoming more popular. There are numerous ways to customize your wedding invites to perfectly suit you. Retailers like Storkie offer unique ways to make your wedding invitations your own.

When it comes to invitation etiquette, many people do not even know where to start. Ideally wedding invitations should be sent out about six weeks before the wedding date and a deadline for RSVPs should be two weeks before the wedding. If you feel like you should invite someone who lives a great distance from the wedding venue, do it. Even if you are positive they will not be able to make it, they will appreciate the gesture. Be sure to have a return address on each envelope in case you get a guest’s address incorrect, that way the post office can return the invitation. If you have an engagement party or other pre-wedding gathering be sure to only invite guests that you will be inviting to the wedding, otherwise you may have hurt feelings later on.

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Olivia Nicholas is a writer and blogger. She has been writing wedding related articles and blogging for over 10 years.

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How to Ditch the RSVP Cards to Save Time and Money on Your Wedding

When sending out wedding invitations, it can be common to include a small wedding RSVP card within the wedding invitation. Depending on how intricate a design you are after, prices can vary greatly on RSVP cards from reasonable to ridiculous. If you opt to go down the DIY route for RSVP cards, you will potentially save a significant amount of money, yet if you have a large guest list, it can end up being a very time consuming exercise.

One way to save money and time when it comes to RSVP cards is to eliminate them all together and via the invitation itself offer alternative ways for your guest to inform you of their attendance status.

An Email RSVP
These days you would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t have email access. Therefor allowing guests to RSVP by email would seem to be an all round convenient choice. I wouldn’t use your regular personal or work email address, as it would be too easy for emails to get lost amongst your inbox. Instead, open up a new free email account with an email provider like Gmail, and dedicate that email for the sole purpose for allowing your guests to RSVP by email.

PROS: Free for both parties.
Cons: Can open up back and forth emails.

The SMS RSVP
Providing a mobile number for guests to text you their attendance availability is another approach and provides another form of convenience for your guest.

PROS: Convenient for your guests. Inexpensive cost of a text message for your guests
Cons: Guests will expect a reply text message, so multiply the cost of a text message by how many invitations you send out. Depending on your current mobile phone plan, it may not be a feasible option for you.

The Phone Call RSVP
For those guests who don’t own a mobile phone or have internet access offering your guests the option to RSVP by landline is ideal. To ensure that you are not swamped with phone calls at all hours of the day, potentially causing your answering machine to flood, set the preferred hours for guests to confirm attendance e.g after 5pm
PROS: Free for both parties. A great chance to catch up with people.

Cons: Guests may have lots of questions etc What should I wear? What’s the food like? If you are busy, this can end up taking up a lot of your time.

If you do decide to eliminate the RSVP cards, I would only choose two of the above methods, or alternatively specify a preference for one method such as email, mentioning that the other two methods are still welcomed if sending an email is not a feasible option.

Keep a master guest list handy at home and be sure to update it daily to reflect the status of each guest’s attendance availability. However, it is probably wiser if only one person is responsible for looking after guest attendance as if too many people are collecting RSVP’s it can be easy to lose track of who is actually attending your wedding.

Do I Need To Include RSVP Cards with my Wedding Invitations?

Whether or not to insert an RSVP card within your wedding invitation is up for debate.  Traditionally in formal weddings, guests would RSVP the bride and groom using their own stationery. Whilst this still happens to a certain extent, many formal weddings these days simply include an RSVP card with their invitation, making it a simple matter for their friends and family to tick the yes or no check-box as to whether or not they will be able to attend the wedding.

However this does not mean that RSVP cards are the norm in modern day weddings. It’s one of those things that is simply a personal choice for the bride and groom.  Typically budget and convenience are the determining factors as to whether or not to use RSVP cards.  On the one hand, with RSVP cards you have hard copy notification of your family and friends availability, yet there are the associated costs of the RSVP cards themselves and the possibility that your guests might misplace the cards and forget to send them.

If you decide against using RSVP cards it is important that there is still some way for guests to inform you of their availability and you need to make this known to them.  Alternative methods of RSVP are email, text messages and a good old phone call.  Don’t forget to include an RSVP deadline. Hopefully a deadline will mean that there will be less people for you to chase up.

Ultimately when it comes to planning your wedding, the decisions are for you and your partner alone.  You make your own rules and if you want to have wedding RSVP cards then do so. If you don’t want to use them, then don’t. It really is that easy.

DIY Wedding Stationey

I suspect that it is not until you actually start to plan a wedding that you begin to realize how expensive planning a wedding actually is, I know that was true for me. Sure I knew the big ticket items like hiring out the reception venue and catering would take a big bite out of the budget, but I never really thought of wedding stationery such as wedding invitations or RSVP cards as costing me a small fortune. Depending on the size of your wedding it can very easily end up costing you in the thousands just for your stationery, which is one of the primary reasons many couples opt to go down the DIY path when it comes to their wedding stationery.

Creating and printing your own wedding stationery requires minimal equipment and supplies. Unless you plan to hand make and write each and every invitation individually, a computer and printer is essential. You will also need blank cardstock or template cardstock. You will most likely have sufficient software such as Microsoft Word, Publisher or graphic editing software. Often, the manufactures of the card stock will come bundled with editing software or have downloads available from their official website.

Many couples love to create their own wedding stationery to showcase their artistic talent. However, what if you are not artistically inclined or are reluctant to showcase your creative skills? Fortunately, there are many stock photography websites on the internet that have a catalog of wedding images and illustrations that can be incorporated into your wedding stationery.

Stock photography websites are sites that sell photographs, clipart, animations and images for a small fee (around $1) There is generally a license and terms of use for the images which you must abide by. Some stock images websites have strict licensing rules, only allowing you to use an image a certain amount of times before you must purchase a new license, whilst other sites offer you unlimited use of that image once you have purchased it.

One stock photograph website, which has a high catalog of images is Fotolia. They offer photographs, illustrations, vector and video. So far, I have found them to be one of the better priced stock photography websites with a good selection of quality images and unlimited use of the image once a license is purchased. They have a good selection of wedding photographs and illustrations as well as design elements such as headers and borders, much like what you see on wedding invitations from specialty stores.

If you have a large guest list, creating your own wedding invitations can take some time, so why not throw a working bee. Throw on some music, get some food and call your bridesmaids for help!

Ditch the Wedding RSVP Card

Instead of including rsvp cards in all your invitations, set up an email just for rsvps. You can choose to use your existing email, however if your guest list is really long, you may wish to keep it separate. Don’t forget to include a phone number for those who don’t  have access to the internet.

Order Wedding Supplies in Bulk

When ordering wedding stationery such as invitations and save the date, rsvp and thank-you cards ask if you can get a discount if you order them all at once and from the  same vendor. It’s a good idea to order a few extra of each just

Save the Date Wedding Cards.

Save the Date cards is similar to an invitation, it’s a pre-invitation really, and it is a heads up that you send your guests to let them know the potential date of the wedding and asking them to kindly reserve that day for your wedding. Rather than buying customised ones, why don’t you make one up on your home computer? You could even use a picture of the bride and groom for a personalised touch. It’s a good idea to stick a magnet onto the back of the cards so that it won’t be lost. You can find adhesive magnets from your local craft store

Identify Each RSVP Card

You may have heard stories from former brides about the headache of receiving the odd RSVP card without any identifying details such as a name. This is undoubtedly a nuisance as it means that your seating plans are stalled.

Many RSVP cards do not have a section for the guest to write down their name, so it is up to you, to make each card identifiable. One solution is to neatly and in small writing, write the guests’ name on the back of each rsvp card in a discreet spot, such as the lower right hand corner.

Let your guests pick the wedding music

I received an email in response to last week’s post Quick Tip: Wedding Music. Jenny wrote to me to tell me about a wedding invitation she received a couple of years back. On the back of the RSVP card, the wedding couple had requested that all guests include 1 or 2 favourite songs a ‘wish list’ of what they would like to have played at the reception.

Jenny told me that she and her fellow guests really enjoyed helping to plan the playlist for the night and thought it a nice touch that she was involved in a small way. It also served a conservation starter on tables where not all guests were well acquainted.

Always Order Extra Invitations

Always order extra invitations to cater for your B guest list, or lost invitations. 10-15% more than your total guest list is a good rule of thumb. That way if you need to send an invitation after the official round of invites have gone out, you won’t need to go to the printer to order more, or as one bride I know has done, gone to the local newsagency and bought some generic ones to send out to her B list!

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