From Proposal to Wedding Day: Wedding Stationery

Paper stationery is still a very important part of weddings. Even with the increased popularity of invitations via email services (evites), weddings stay true to their tradition and still utilize paper invitations and save the dates. Read on for some tips on how to create wedding stationery that is beautiful, fits your theme and doesn’t break the bank.

SAVE-THE-DATE announcements - although not necessary, these became a must for the majority of brides. Keep in mind that you don’t need them if all of your guests already know about your wedding date and don’t need to make advance travel arrangements. You can also use email save-the-dates (www.evite.com, www.punchbowl.com).

If you decide to mail them, I recommend designing them with the same stationery designer that is working on your invitation. This way you can keep the look cohesive. Save-the-dates are usually less formal, so you can play with different ideas here, from edible cookies with your wedding date on them (you can mail them or hand them out at your engagement party) to the fridge magnets. Save-the-dates can be really anything that you can think of and what your budget allows for. Mailing a pretty box of flower seeds with your wedding date for a garden/outdoor wedding or a wine cork engraved with your upcoming wedding date for a vineyard wedding will definitely get noticed.

INVITATIONS are your guests’ first glimpse into your wedding style, so spend some time on visualizing what you want your wedding to be and make sure invitations reflect that.

Invitations are typically mailed 6-8 weeks prior to your wedding date. RSVP date is set at three weeks after invitations get mailed. If you have a lot of out-of-town guests that are staying at a hotel, make sure that you set your RSVP date a few days before the hotel reservations are due. This way you have a few days to contact your guests that did not respond and remind them about RSVP-ing and also about booking their rooms at a reduced group rate.

When it comes to designing your wedding invitation, I am a big proponent of personalized, custom invites. Find a stationery designer that fits your style and budget and work with them on creating your unique stationery. When working with a stationery designer, you can create your own monogram or a crest to be used on all of your wedding stationery. And you’ll have so much fun doing it. Many of our brides tell us how special it feels to be a part of designing their own invites.

Whichever route you choose to go, make sure your invitation supplier is reliable, order a sample of paper to see the quality and thickness of it and also some printed samples to see the quality of printing. And give yourself extra time. Off-the rack invitations typically require one month for processing, printing and mailing. Custom invites can take anywhere from 3-4 months. So plan accordingly. And make sure all the details are triple checked and all the names and addresses are proofread. Once the printer receives your file, you will not be able to change anything, and you’ll have to pay extra to correct your mistake.

While your invitations are at the printer, you should focus on figuring out the stamps that you want to use for your invitations. Bring a sample of your invitation, including all the enclosures, to the post office and ask to be weighed and measured for the proper postage. Then, you have an option of choosing postal stamps (typically each year U.S. Postal Service releases wedding related stamps). For a small upcharge you can design your own stamps on www.zazzle.com or www.photostamps.com that will reflect your wedding theme and colors much better.

And a word of caution about DIY wedding invitations. I’ve heard it many times from so many frustrated brides trying to print them on their own. After long hours at your home printer, card stock not printing right, paper wasting and a gruesome assembly, you end up with invitations that, well, look like they were printed on a home printer and sweated over. I simply say - don’t do it! They never look sophisticated, are very time consuming and in the end you really are not saving any money.

CEREMONY PROGRAMS - this is one element of the wedding stationery that a lot of our brides are skipping and saving money on. I would recommend printing these if your ceremony is complicated and has many components that you would like to explain to your guests or if you want to acknowledge some people and include special thank you in your program. Your budget will dictate how elaborate you want to go with these, but we usually suggest simple programs that are printed professionally and designed in unison with your other stationery. Anything more complicated (grommets, ribbons, fan shaped, etc.) will be costing you at least $3 per program and leave you with an aching heart when you see a lot of them left behind.

SEATING CHART/ESCORT CARDS/PLACE CARDS. We, at Pumpkin Coach Events, love seating charts! It makes seating a snap (our record time was 2 minutes for 125 guests!), saves money (and trees!) and it looks beautiful, when designed in unison with the rest of your stationery. Make sure that your chart is large enough (at least 18” x 24”) and the font size can be seen from some distance. For larger weddings, you should do 2 sets of seating charts (positioned in the opposite sides of the cocktail hour space, so there’s no crowding) and possibly break up names in two charts (e.i. A-M and L-Z).

In my next blog I will talk about making yourself beautiful for your wedding day. In the meantime – happy wedding planning!