DIY: Stationery

(If you haven't seen someecards, I highly recommend partaking in their hilarity.)

So far, one of the biggest ways Mr. FP and I have saved money on the wedding was on our stationery. When I started looking at invitations, I fell in love with the designs the sellers on Etsy had to offer. But with prices that ranged anywhere from $2.50 - 10.00 per invitation, there was no way I was going to drop that kind of coin.

I also considered buying a set of invitations which can be printed at home from places like Michaels or A.C. Moore but I couldn't find any designs that really appealed to me. Plus, when you factor in costs like buying a printer (if you don't already have one) and ink (who knows how much ink it'll take to print 100 or more invites) plus the cost of the actual invites which usually come in packs of 50 for somewhere between $30 and $60.

I know this is relatively cheap as far as wedding standards go, but I was determined to find invitations with a design that we loved and a price that I can live with.

Thankfully I did. With a little help from Mr. FP (okay, a lot of help) I learned how to use Adobe Photoshop and with a little practice (okay, once again, a lot of it) I finally got to the point where I could design our invitations myself. Yes, it took a long time, and yes, it was frustrating. But it was so worth it in the end. We now invitations no one else will ever have (a much better alternative to an "out of the box" option, in my opinion) and more importantly, we love them.

Getting them printed will be easy peasy (more on that in a future post) and this way all of our stationary can be fitted to match the invitations because I designed the artwork and can alter it to fit anything (so far we've done RSVP's, business cards with our wedding website on it and stickers for our guest favors).

Although I understand the hesitation to take on something like this in the months prior to your wedding, I highly recommend it if you have the time and if you're mildly crafty. I have a huge sense of accomplishment every time I see our invitations and I'm so excited to send them out to our friends and families. In spite of the fact that I started this endeavor in hopes of saving us some money, in the end, it had nothing to do with finances. We're both so in love with what we've created that I'm happy we didn't do it any other way.