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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

How to Save on your (Royal) Wedding Day: Part 4



Part 4: SAVE THE DATES!


So I'm a few days behind on my 10 part series of:
How to Save on your (Royal) Wedding Day
Oh well, I'll catch up.


But Part 4 will give you a few ideas on how to save on your save the dates.
Staring with postage.
Did you even consider how much that adds up?

Let's consider a wedding with a guest list of 200.
200 save the dates + 200 invitations + 200 response cards = 600 stamps.
That's $264. On postage. Alone.


Now not everyone sends out save the dates. Not everyone needs to. But for us, since we had family from all over who would need to make arrangements for travel, we opted to go ahead with save the dates. Many brides are opting to send out an email with a link to their wedding website, but many brides are still choosing to send out save the dates.


Before you sign yourself up to spend another couple hundred dollars on save the dates, consider sending out a postcard. At 27 cents a stamp, for 200 postcards you'll save $34. Yes, that seems like a small savings. But it adds up. Might as well cut costs where you can.


Not only will the postage be cheaper if you send a postcard, but with a little design know-how you can create your own with relative ease. If you're slightly photoshop savvy (or have a friend who is) you can custom design the front and back of your card which will save you TONS.


Using my own design (based off one I found online that I liked) I paid less than $40 to print my postcards at a LOCAL print shop,and helped out a local business.


These are my Save the Dates.
For the front I used a photo of us - made it black & white (to save on printing costs) and used photoshop to add in the writing. On the backside, I provided additional information along with our wedding website. I must say, I was pretty pleased with the results!

If you're not convinced you can create your own, consider sending out postcards from your hometown, or the wedding location. You can find tons of vintage postcards online and in many thrift shops too.

Even if you're not computer savvy, you could even use rubber stamps to create your design, then take it to a printer and see if they can print from your hard copy. I got to know my local printer very well. He helped me out, and I gave him business.

Here are my key notes:

1. Postcards will save you on postage.

2. Creating your own design could save you BIG.

3. Consider making your design black & white to save on printing costs.

4. Try and find a LOCAL printer - someone who can work with you and actually answer your questions.

You could save anywhere from $30-$150.
(from postage to designing your own)

*Perhaps I shouldn't tell you that we had to change our wedding dates AFTER we sent out the save the dates? Yeah, go figure. But that's the Army for you :-)

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