Wedding stationery - money saving tips

There are a myriad of choices when considering your wedding stationery. Invitations, RSVP cards, place cards, Order of Service covers and Thank you cards. Some brides have even adopted the American custom of “save the date” cards.

Save the Date cards

The first step to saving money with wedding stationery is to eliminate Save the Date cards and RSVP cards. There are very few instances when guests need a considerable amount of notice unless you are getting married on either a long weekend, New Years Eve, Valentines Day or a public holiday.  If any of those instances apply, then an email or telephone call is sufficient.

RSVP cards

There are always guests who will not, for whatever reason, respond to your invitation by the nominated RSVP date. The provision of RSVP cards will not alter this fact. Your guests are perfectly capable of buying their own acceptance cards or writing their own acceptance notes. For those guests who do not do so, you can take comfort in knowing that in every wedding, there are some guests who have to be contacted to ascertain their attendance at your wedding. This is an inescapable, albeit frustrating, reality.

Order of Service Covers

For individual Order of Service covers with a lovely personalised touch, take a photograph of your wedding ceremony venue and print it off as the Order of Service Cover.  If you are having a religious ceremony, a photograph of the front of the Church/Synagogue/Temple/Mosque as a Order of Service cover, becomes a beautiful souvenir of the Ceremony site for your guests. If you are having a civil ceremony, then consider taking a photograph of either your ceremony venue or the front of your reception venue.

You can either print the photo off yourself using a good quality parchment or take it to a printing company such as Printer’s Devil or Kwik Copy to print off the quantity you want.  

Whilst I am not an advocate of do-it-yourself, printing photographs onto parchment does not require much, if any, skill. You should upload the photograph and then using photoshop, select “rotate right.”  The photo should be horizontal (sideways) with the bottom of the photograph on the left hand side and the top of the photograph on the right hand side.

The photograph should be on the lower/bottom half of an A4 size sheet. See below for an example. 

You can then either staple the pages of the Order of Service insert together or get 2 holes punched in the middle of the cover and insert pages then tie the bundle together with a little ribbon. You can buy spools of ribbon from craft stores, fabric shops such as Lincraft or the markets. You should aim for fabric ribbon as opposed to the curling ribbon used for gift wrapping.

Thank you cards

You really don’t need to buy matching thank you cards. A pack of plain cards with a photograph or print on the cover, bought from any discount store, works well for thank you cards.

Alternatively, a scanned wedding photograph printed on any leftover sheets of parchment make lovely thank you notes.

 

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