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Wedding Invitations: Your Complete Guide to Perfect Wedding Stationery
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How to Choose the Perfect Wedding Invitations
Wedding invitations are about so much more than just sharing event details. They are a glimpse into the world you have crafted for guests to enjoy. They are mini artworks that say something about you as a couple. And they get guests excited about the celebration to come. Whether you forgo traditional mailed wedding stationery in favor of a wedding website or you send out save the dates and a full invitational suite, there's no denying the importance of receiving a wedding invite.
When we began planning our wedding, we had no clue about RSVP cards or invitation suites, and it took us a long while to get our heads around the subject. After many hours spent hunched over our laptops reading about invites on endless different websites, we eventually found the information we needed. But it was a struggle!
Our lengthy process of wedding invitation discovery inspired us to help future couples by putting together our own guide. So we created a simple step-by-step plan that also shares the benefits of taking invites online. We believe that utilizing our free wedding planning tools, such as our wedding website builder, can save a significant amount of time and money. An intuitive free tool that gives you the ability to design your own online wedding invitation, as well as build a guest list and collect RSVPs!
In this guide, we'll share a little more about our wedding website builder and how it can be used in partnership with your wedding invite or replace it altogether!
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Your Complete Guide to Wedding Invitations
Learn everything you need to know about printed and digital wedding invitations, including styles, etiquette, and what to include in your wedding invitation suite. We'll also share links to other guides we've made that offer a deep dive into certain subjects.
Types of Wedding Invitations: Design Styles and Templates
You've likely already noticed that there are a handful of primary categories for wedding invitation designs available, and yours will undoubtedly fall into one of these styles below.
Three of the most popular styles of printed wedding invitations are letterpress, rustic, and elegant or minimalist. There are many subcategories within those, and you'll find a more in-depth look into each style in our Wedding Invitation Design Ideas guide.
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- How to Choose the Perfect Wedding Invitations
- Your Complete Guide to Wedding Invitations
- Types of Wedding Invitations: Design Styles and Templates
- Traditional Printed Wedding Invitation Suites
- Digital Wedding Invitations
- Digital vs Traditional Wedding Invitations
- Wedding Invitation Timeline and Etiquette
- Recommended Wedding Invitation Schedule
- Wedding Invite Etiquette Tips
- Budget-Friendly Wedding Invitation Options
Traditional Printed Wedding Invitation Suites
Letterpress-style invites suit a traditional, perhaps more formal celebration, and the tactile nature of the raised type works well on printed stationery and envelopes. This style of wedding invite is often printed on heavy cardstock, and the font is embossed, giving the invitation a luxurious feel.
Rustic wedding invitations, on the other hand, can be printed on a much lighter paper stock and will use more whimsical fonts and calligraphy, along with watercolor pictures and illustrations.
An elegant wedding invitation is ideal for a fairly neutral or modern celebration, as its style doesn't lean in one direction or another. You'll find these more minimalist designs regularly feature aspects of the two styles above, such as illustrations, especially on destination wedding invites.
A traditional wedding invitation suite would typically feature the invite, an RSVP card, and various information cards all enclosed within an inner envelope and an outer envelope. Both envelopes will be addressed to the recipient, but the outside one will have address details included.
Digital Wedding Invitations
Our wedding website builder offers a range of different template options to help kick-start the design process. These templates are quick to customize and reflect the major invitation styles mentioned above. You can easily adapt our designs to suit the theme of your wedding, whether you're planning a super formal occasion or a more rustic affair.
The amazing thing about using a wedding website as a digital wedding invitation is that it can evolve as your celebration does. This feature is especially beneficial if you are uncertain about the details of your wedding day during the early stages of planning. Our online space gives you the freedom to adapt as you progress, without requiring you to rush into any stylistic decisions early on. You can even change your website template whenever you wish.
Learn more about creating digital wedding invitations and their benefits.
Digital vs Traditional Wedding Invitations
Now you've got an idea of what traditional and digital wedding invitations look like; let's compare the two.
Cost
The cost of traditional wedding invitations is dictated by the weight and style of paper, the complexity of the printing process, and whether the invite is created from scratch by a graphic designer. It's possible to adapt templates online for free using Canva or to buy affordable wedding invitation templates on Etsy, which will cut down the overall cost. But printing, stuffing, and mailing the invitation can be pricier than you'd think.
Our wedding website builder offers a completely free alternative to sending wedding invitations in the mail. We give you the power to create a unique wedding space online containing all the important details about your big day. A place to share engagement photos, videos, and the countdown to the celebration. A hub for handy links to your registry, accommodation, and transport bookings. And it also serves as a destination for guests to confirm their attendance. Plus so much more!
All completely free, with no catches.
Convenience
We've heard from plenty of couples over the years who have faced issues with postage delays both domestically and internationally, and it often creates quite a backlog in their planning timeline. A timeline that has already been stretched thinly due to the unforeseen length of time it takes to have invites designed, produced, and labeled.
Digital wedding cards and wedding websites eradicate much of the above inconvenience, as your invite is mailed either via email, text message, or even AirDrop! This means that your entire guest list can receive your wedding invitation and any additional information you wish to share almost instantly.
You are also free to design your wedding website at your own pace, which should allow you to dictate just how much space within the planning timeline it will take. This is a godsend if you are waiting on vendors to confirm, as it allows you to continue working on your wedding invitations and update them whenever you wish.
Creating a free version of your printed wedding invitation online using our builder is ideal for sharing with international guests, as it'll help avoid the cost of postage, and they'll receive their invite instantly.
Environmental Impact
Sending and receiving a full wedding invitation suite and separate thank you card in the post is a luxury and obviously a lovely thing for your guests to cherish, but at a cost to the environment. Your invitations will require a lot of paper, which will then be sent to your guests, possibly halfway across the world. You will then repeat this process, albeit on a smaller scale, with your thank-you cards after you've tied the knot.
Creating a digital wedding invitation reduces this cost to the environment down to almost zero and will help balance out the impact your wedding day will have on the world.
The Guest Experience
There's no escaping the fact that guests love the tactile nature of physical wedding invitations. It's special to receive a suite full of information about upcoming nuptials, and it's the type of mail many of your guests will cherish for many years to come.
A digital invite cannot replace the experience of receiving a formal wedding invitation in the mail, but it can offer more information and interactivity. Guests will love browsing your engagement pictures, watching the video you make for your site, and clicking through your links to find more details about the big day. This interactive experience will also evolve as your wedding plans progress and can react in real time to any updated events. This is an advantage that printed invites certainly do not offer!
Your wedding website is also yours to keep long after the wedding day and can become a celebration of the big day, featuring wedding day pictures uploaded by you, your guests, and your photographer. Alongside a personal message from you both, thanking everyone for attending.
Not sure which approach is best for your big day? Take a deep dive into the pros and cons of both digital and traditional wedding invitations in our guide.
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Wedding Invitation Timeline and Etiquette
While it's tempting to really freestyle your invites and throw all notion of wedding invitation etiquette out the window, do so at your peril. By all means, feel free to change tradition by using digital save-the-dates and more modern wedding invitation wording. But the core elements and timing of wedding invitations must remain if you want guests to arrive when they should and be equipped with correct information.
Learn more about proper wedding invitation etiquette and timing in our comprehensive guide.
Recommended Wedding Invitation Schedule
Save the Dates
Assuming that you're hosting a local, domestic wedding, you should be sending out save-the-dates 6-8 months before the big day. It's important to get the date and location locked in the minds and calendars of your guests early, but not so early that they forget it.
Wedding Invitations or Premier of Wedding Website
Whether you choose to go digital or stick with paper, a good goal is to let your guests know the full details of your wedding about 3 months in advance. Keep in mind that some guests will need up to 4 months to RSVP, book accommodation, and travel.
RSVP Deadline
It's crucial to set a clear RSVP deadline, as the caterer and venue will need to know the final numbers well before the celebration. We would recommend setting the deadline at 1 month before the wedding, as that should provide you enough time to round up the stragglers. It's also a good idea to start nudging those you know will be late with their RSVPs roughly 6-8 weeks before the day.
If you are worried about late responses to your wedding invitation, use an online RSVP such as ours. Our free app will notify you by email as soon as someone replies, and you'll be able to view their RSVP in your professional guest list tool. We can't guarantee using a digital RSVP will stop late RSVPs altogether, but it will encourage guests to reply quicker, as they can do it instantly on their phones!
Wedding Invite Etiquette Tips
- When addressing traditional wedding invitations, be sure to write the full names of your guests, such as Mr. and Mrs. Patel, unless you're certain a particular guest/s would prefer to be addressed more casually.
- Consider handwriting your wedding invitation envelopes yourself, or ask someone with nice handwriting to help, as this adds a personal touch to the suite.
- Keep the information on wedding cards and enclosures concise. Avoid stuffing each card with too much information by providing a link to your wedding website, where guests can fully debrief on every detail.
Ensure your invites are perfect and on time with our full Wedding Invitation Etiquette guide.
Get started with your invitations
Budget-Friendly Wedding Invitation Options
We'll be honest, sending physical wedding invitations is expensive, and we know a lot of couples who've been stung by the cost of paper and printing. However, there are simple ways to cut down this expense and boost your wedding budget without things looking cheap.
Blend Paper and Digital
Send your save-the-dates on premium paper through the mail, and include a link to your free wedding website on them. Use your free online space as the wedding invitation, and you'll massively reduce the overall wedding stationery budget. By blending a little paper stationery with an online invitation, guests receive a physical keepsake of the wedding journey and can take advantage of all the information and interactivity that a wedding website offers.
What Matters to You?
We always tell couples to listen to each other, not others, when planning their wedding, as your friends and family are not the ones getting married; you are! If you would prefer to reduce the expense of printed stationery and make your wedding menu available through a QR code, then feel free to do so. If the cost of high-quality printed ceremony programs and escort cards is prohibitive and prevents you from hiring the band you really want or your favorite food truck, don't feel obliged.
Prioritize the vendors and wedding details that mean something to you, and use our free tools to help give you the budget for them.
Go for Digital Printing
Foil and letterpress printing looks stunning, but they're costly. Opt out of fancy printing, at least for the bulk of your wedding collection stationery, and you'll find the digital alternative is a lot more budget-friendly.
Bring down the cost of your wedding like a pro with our Affordable Wedding Invitations guide, and get our expert tips on not breaking the bank with your stationery.
Complete Wedding Invitations Resources
The online Wedding Planning Assistant gives you everything you need to create beautiful wedding invitations, manage your guest list, and send RSVPs — all for free.
We offer wedding planning services worldwide. Our goal is to make our software available in every language — currently, it’s available in the following: