Some areas of the wedding I'm happy to spend what it takes to get what we want. Other areas I'm happy to cut costs as much as possible. The latter is true for invitations. I've never seen the point in spending tons of money on fancy paper, and now with the internet I see even less point. I think there are maybe 3 people we're thinking of inviting who aren't online, and one of them is DF's aunt who is easy to keep in the loop, while the other 2 are elderly across-the-Atlantic relatives who I don't expect to come anyway. So my idea is to have postcards made to use as invitations, and I've found a website where I can get 100 for under £10. I have three thoughts for pictures to use: 1) The Palais Des Ducs, where we got engaged (and there is a great panoramic photo that is Creative Commons licensed that we can use); 2) the venue we end up choosing; or 3) a photo of us from the engagement shoot we are going to have with our photographer. Then on the back we'd have stickers printed with our names, the venue, the date and time and the wedding website, leaving space on the usual address side to handwrite the address.
The main problem, obviously, is that this doesn't leave space for an RSVP card or even really allow for us to put our address and phone number on (though this info would obviously be on the website). This is good in that it saves us money on postage, envelopes and extra cards, but it would limit people to answering exclusively online. How do people feel about this? If you got just a postcard as an invitation, would you feel annoyed or that it was really tacky? Is it unfair to expect people to just RSVP online? (I should note, anyone I invite who is less than web savvy is able to let my mum know anyway) What else would you suggest for saving money? If you do like it, which picture do you think we should use out of the above ideas (or suggest a new one if you think of something better)? Thanks!
You can design a tear off as part of your postcard if you wish, but something I was considering doing as going to do a whole self printed invitation set. I work with artists and designers every day so am used to getting things printed in big runs. It makes a huge difference, it's the difference between getting your photos printed at boots by a huge machine or in a darkroom by someone with a real eye, moo.com are excellent.
I was considering -
Postcard for the main invitation, but printed on both sides, so not a traditional postcard.
Business card as the RSVP if you need them, but a website will do just as well.
Stickers printed for envelope seals.
And putting everything in an envelope, so you get the cheapness of a printed postcard but it's slightly more formal.
Keep Print quality in mind. The print quality of something that costs £10 for a 100 is likely to be pretty poor, I can't say for certain, but you need to consider card and print quality, as well as finish, matte, glossy etc. For 100 a reasonable figure would be more like £30-£50
I really quickly mocked up the design I was thinking about (10 minutes - on the real one I was going to use my own photographs as ours is a vintagey, london ceremony set in a WW2 museum) and I've used an actual post card template (yes they need to be that big!) so you can see how careful you need to be about aliasing so text etc is vectorised and the photographs are of a high resolution and size so when they're printed you don't get just blurry smudges, things that look fine on your computer can look awful when printed.
I think it's a great idea and love the postcard look
I like the whole invitation thing, they set the tone a bit so we ended up going with something much more kitsch as that's our wedding, stupid, kitsch, immature and fun.
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http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/4963/invitesblackwhite.jpgxposted with squirrellypoo, yay for moo.com they're AWESOME!
