Wedding Invites, Order of Service and Place Cards

by Jane
(Bucks)

We wanted invitations to reflect us and be individual, so we decided to use a scan of a watercolour painting we have of our cat sitting in colourful flowers.

We had two sizes: one full invitation and one evening-only, plus the place name cards and the table name cards (which were just place names cut in half). All cards and envelopes were bought from an online retailer and printed on my inkjet for a total cost of £55.75 for the cards and about £9 for the ink cartridges. All addresses were printed onto the envelopes and that stopped us having to do it longhand. We learned how to do mail merge on the PC to get names onto the invitations!

Orders of Service we did get printed as there were rather a lot and they needed stapling together. (You can get away with single invitations for families but everyone gets their own Order of Service!) However, we did the design and they got printed at discount by the printer uncle of my fiancé’s business partner. £81.50 for 125. Had to do loads of spares as the church service was open to the normal congregation too and we’d no idea who would turn up! They had a Celtic cross on the front and a knot theme inside to link with my fiancé’s Irish half. If you’re not having a church wedding, then these costs won’t exist.

Don’t forget to order card for doing thank yous after the wedding or you’ll have to do a separate order and this means extra postage costs!!!

Tip: if your guests had a choice of food and you had to ask in advance who wanted what, put different coloured dots on the placecards. It stops the serving staff having to bother everyone for what they ordered. It also stops people forgetting what they asked for and eating someone else's order!