Wedding plans continue to march right along…even if sometimes it feels like they’re marching around in a circle.
The past few weeks have been focused on getting the invitations out. I’m thankful to say that most of the invitations went out today. I was beginning to think they would never go out.
Abby and I decided to print the invitations ourselves because after a little research, we determined that it would be the less expensive route to go and we’d rather spend the money on other aspects of the wedding. We figured we’d go to Walmart, find an invitation kit we liked, buy a bunch, get a design laid out in Word, and then print them all.
In theory, this was a good idea, but we ran into problems immediately. The invitation kit we ended up liking the best had been discontinued and the Walmart didn’t have enough of them. We called the Walmarts within a 50 mile radius and managed to track down enough.
I also severely underestimated the amount of time it would take to get all the margins and styles just right for the invitation. I thought it would take 10-15 minutes tops, but it took me an hour until I was happy with it. Getting them printed was another story–that took an entire Saturday afternoon. That wasn’t an overly painful process so much as it was tedious. With 3-4 different pieces to print on, I found myself spending a lot of time messing with the paper feed on the printer so it wasn’t getting jammed or printing sideways.
The most frustrating part of the process came when it was time to buy postage. Turns out the kit didn’t follow postal regulations in two regards: the reply envelopes were to small to be mailed at all and the main envelope was too big for standard postage. Perhaps this was a motivating factor towards the discontinuing of the product. At any rate, we got larger envelopes for the reply cards and just got the extra postage we needed to send the invitations.
All in all, I’m glad we got over this hurdle. However, as I go over the budget and consider the amount of hours that went into it, it definitely was not worth it to print the invitations ourselves. I will be strongly recommending to my engaged friends to just hire a professional. It will be well worth it.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
