Paper. (or how to save some wedding $)

I wish I had graphic design skills and/or software.

It turns out there are a lot of documents one needs to throw a wedding: save the date cards, envelopes, invitations, information cards included with invitations, ceremony programs, boatloads of thank you cards, table numbers, escort cards, menus, photo sharing information cards, signs directing folks to the bar, the photobooth, the parking lot, or the restrooms, etc.

Back in the early days of wedding planning I determined that to save money I would make all our our stationary by hand, adding in my stamping and scrapbooking skillz. Ha! After more than a little lusting after beautiful and unique handmade designs from wedding sites and Pinterest, I looked into how much it would cost to put together each item. My dreams of DIY wedding stationary were quickly dashed when I realized that I would spent twice the money and quadruple the time on paper items that would not be able to measure up in quality to professional work.

Dedicated to not shelling out thousands on all-in-one stationary companies, I figured the next best thing to making everything by hand was to have pieces made individually that look nice and then print them en masse via a discount printing service. Enter Vistaprint! There are all kinds of wedding-y folk online that are dying to help other brides save money, and I came across a particularly awesome site written by a former bride (who happened to get married at PL, my childhood summer camp!) describing how to game Vistaprint deal e-mails for wicked cheap wedding stationary. So far I have managed to get photo sharing materials and return address labels for less than $10 total, and there are plans in the works for Thank You cards, ceremony programs, menus, and other signage for purchase with Groupons (another wedding cash-saver) that I am putting together.

Another very helpful resource was finding that more and more Etsy vendors are selling digital files of creative signage for weddings. For a few dollars I can get a well-designed document that I can then upload to Vistaprint and have printed cheaply, leaving me more time for paper-flower folding instead of pretending I understand how open-source graphics software works! If you own the software and understand how it works, look into doing the same thing! Speaking as a design-challenged, short-on-time bride there's some decent money to be made.

So no, you will not be reading our ceremony details the day of the wedding on handmade, individually painted layered programs. But I will still have all my hair (that mass with a mind of its own deserves its own blog post) and we'll even be able to afford to buy you a drink!