With our tiny budget of $11,000 and massive 700 guest list, we knew we couldn’t afford to get fancy letter press or embossing or hand calligraphy. So we went with simple 5×7 invites printed on white cardstock that would match our brown and pink wedding colors. Result?

I never understood what the big deal was about handwriting the addresses on the envelopes to the guests. It seems highly inefficient and rather stupid. Therefore Mr. Mercy and I will be printing out our guests names on LABELS (please refrain from crying out in horror). *rolls eyes*. For the 275-300 invites we send and the 500 invites our parents send, it just seems like the most logical thing to do
The envelopes are a bit plain and a bit thin… but I don’t care– it’s an envelope. If people want to judge me based on the quality of the envelope… I don’t know what to say to their stupidity. To make the envelopes more personal, we’ll have a monogram stamp that will be affixed to the flap of every envelope:

Included in our invitations will be a postcard as our RSVP form (to save on money for postage). The reasoning behind this is that we LOVE playing scrabble so it just seems suitable you know?

Also we’ll include the complimentary cards regarding hotel accommodations from the Crown Plaza where we negotiated a discounted rate for our out-of-town guests. Directions will be handed out at the wedding (since no one remembers to bring them to the wedding anyway and the ceremony and the reception venues are literally down the street from one another).

Save-The-Dates– My fiance made me promise I would stop calling them “STDs”… We went to a photobooth in the mall took our pictures and they upload it onto a website for you… so we got it from there and then added all the extra detail! It goes along great with our photo theme and will be electronically sent out to all of our guests in a few weeks with our website information and the option to RSVP online

Wedding Party Requests– I sent out Smilebox requests to our hopeful wedding party (bridesmaids, make-up artist, gift table, etc.) asking them if they would serve in that capacity. I love love LOVE smilebox, it was so easy to use and I could customize it with photos… which is a big part of our wedding.
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Programs– will be printing it out on the same cardstock. I just got one of those pre-formatted brochure forms and adapted it into our tri-fold program with the same pink swirl decal with the brown outline on the front.

Thank you cards– We’ll be doing postcards from Vistaprint.com. I got my business cards through this company and was impressed with their quality of service. So I ordered 100 free postcards through them (paid $10 for shipping) and loved the product. Then ordered the remaining 500 to send out to all of our guests and our parents’ guests. These postcards are cheaper than any set of thank you cards I could order, more personal, and the pre-design already goes along with the pink and brown theme!

As for our escort cards/ name cards– please refer to next post about our cake… aren’t you curious to see how they’re related?
Total cost for all the paper details of the wedding? $35 for 5 packs of 250 sheets of 110 lb white cardstock + $66 for white greeting card size envelopes+ $17 pack of 2,000 labels + $3 for save the date photobooth strip + $40 for monogram stamper for the envelopes + $76 for 600 thank you postcards=$237.00!!!!! (+ postage!)
Anyone else having DIY invites? Share your ideas!!