Make Your Wedding Inexpensive

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Deal with and assemble your invites in time to send them out six to 8 weeks before the big day. This will offer everyone a few weeks to reply (set a deadline on your reaction card) and, if you get several regrets, can let you to invite folks on your “wish list” a few weeks before the nuptial.

Develop an Invitation Assembly Line

There’s a lot of detail involved in a finished wedding invitation and you’ve got possibly hundreds to put together. Use our tried-and-true procedure for getting rid of as much error and oversight as possible!

Get It Weighed

First thing’s first: once your stationery arrives in, check through the separate boxes of invitations, envelopes and enclosures. Guarantee the design, wording, stock and ink shade are as they ought to be. Afterward gather a single invitation completely (including any maps, tissue paper, and also the stamp on the return envelope) and take it down to the post office to get it weighed and measured. Heavy invites and nonstandard dimensions could drive up your postal cost. Obtain ample stamps to send out all your invites and to put on all the response envelopes. The post office sells special floral and “love” designs which you might need to opt for from. If you’ve got worldwide company, get ample postage to include the price of their invitations while you’re at it.

Know Your Recipients

You should have this taken care of prior to when your stationery comes in. Devise a complete list of all your friends’ complete titles, mailing handles, and the names of their accompanying children, spouses or dates. If you’re employing your wedding web page’s online visitor databases, you can very easily export all this to a imprinted list.

Assemble the Invites

To most proficiently organize your invitations, clear everything on your desk and set up your invitations like an assembly line, from envelopes to invitations to enclosures. Create stacks of all your invitation parts and make sure they’re of equal number (50 envelopes, 50 invites, 50 response cards, and so forth).

Assemble wedding invites one at a time, and don’t have more than two people working on them at once there’s too much potential for confusion. Stamp all the return envelopes before you get going. For every invite:

- Address the outer and inner envelopes (see below for envelope etiquette) and prepare the response card. Tuck the response card below the flap of the response envelope, with the text showing.

- Stack the enclosures, face up. On the bottom of the stack should be the tissue paper (if any), then the reception card, then the map cards and any various enclosures. On the very top of the stack put the response envelope and card.

- For a single fold invitation with text on the exterior only, arrange this stack of enclosures on top of the invitation. For multi-fold invites or those with text within the fold, put the stack of enclosures inside the first fold. Insert the whole thing into the inner envelope.

- Leave the inner envelope unsealed and put it into the outer envelope flap down, so that the handwritten names on the inner envelope are visible. Leave the outer envelope unsealed for now, and move on to the next invite.

Once you’re completed with this batch, all your stacks should be empty because you started with equal numbers. If you have any extras, you missed something (this is why we didn’t seal the outer envelopes yet. Verify your invitations and see exactly where the issue is. Otherwise, seal the outer envelopes, stamp them, put them aside and create stacks for the following batch.

Pace yourself, work with each other, and the mountain could at some point move for you. Once mailing your invites, consider them into the post office and ask that they be hand-canceled. Not all postal workers should do it, but it seems nicer than the messy machine-cancellation and can avert invites from getting broken in the machines. Check off the friends’ “invitation sent” flag in your guest databases to keep track of those you’ve sent invites to. An additional excellent notion is to mail yourself an invite with the others; this way you’ll know when local invitations have been delivered.

Envelope Address Etiquette

As was the situation with your invite wording, envelope addresses should not include abbreviations. They should also be handwritten (don’t use stick-on computer printers labels). You can hire a calligrapher if you’ve got the coin to spare, or bribe a pal or relative that has polished penmanship (inform them it’s their nuptial gift to you).

Once addressing outer envelopes, jot down the full name of the receiver and, naturally, include their address. Keep in mind not to abbreviate! On the inner envelope, jot down just the surname of the recipients. Write their accompanying guest’s name here too, if you’re not sending a separate invite to them. If this receiver has kids under the age of 18 that are invited, include their first names on the inner envelope as a list—oldest to youngest. Children 18 and up (or 16 and up, it’s your call) ought to be sent their own invitation, even if they’re residing with their parents. Here are a couple illustrations:

Addressing Envelopes for a Single Receiver

Outer Envelope:
Ms. Rebecca Walker
332 Oak Drive
Chicago, Illinois 60617

Inner Envelope, if No Guest:
Miss (or Ms.) Walker

Inner Envelope, if with Guest:
Miss (or Ms.) Walker and Mr. Davidson

Addressing Envelopes for a Married Couple

Outer Envelope:
Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Morgan
83 Chestnut Circle
Houston, Texas 77381

Inner Envelope, if No Youngsters
Mr. and Mrs. Morgan

Inner Envelope, if with Little Ones
Mr. and Mrs. Morgan
John, Rachael, and Daniel

Dealing with Your Responses

As the response cards come in , make a note of each and every visitor’s response on your guest list and update your current total headcount. If you’re utilizing your internet site’s guest repository and are enabling online RSVP, a lot of visitors may have previously completed it for you.

Call any company who has not sent a reply by your deadline. You need to get a final headcount to give to distributors like your caterer, and additionally to know if you’ll be able to invite anyone on your “wish list”.

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