Explore more wedding ideas & advice
Affordable Wedding Invitations: Budget-Friendly Ideas that Don't Compromise on Style
Explore
Our service has assisted tens of thousands of couples worldwide in planning their dream weddings!
Discover How Easy it is to Save a Fortune on Save the Dates, Invites & RSVPs
If mounting wedding stationery costs are starting to keep you up at night, we hear you. The true price of envelopes, printed invitation suites, and international mailing was a real shock for us when we planned our wedding. We had no idea that the process of actually inviting friends and family to our wedding would end up being one of the major expenses within our wedding budget. But as soon as we did see the costs piling up, we started to seek cheaper alternatives.
At the time of planning our wedding, we hadn't created our wedding website builder yet. But the process of seeking budget wedding invitation suites and free RSVP cards directly inspired its creation. As during the wedding planning process, we discovered that even by cutting costs on printing and taking the invite process online as much as possible, we were still over budget and wasting time... We were using multiple different websites to help us produce our wedding invitation sets, alongside an RSVP provider and wedding website. While these resources proved beneficial, they unavoidably slowed down the entire event planning process. What we needed was a service that provided everything all in one place and at a much lower cost. So we created one!
We know from experience that not every couple wants to spend hundreds on traditional wedding stationery or has the time to go through the process of sending them. Which is why we offer a free alternative that gives you control over design, effortlessly keeps track of RSVPs, and ensures your guests are always up-to-date. Because printed wedding invitations are great, but what really matters is the big day itself! So why not save your wedding stationery budget and throw an even better wedding?!
Explore our complete wedding invitations guide for more inspiration and ideas.
Cheap Wedding Invitation Options That Look Expensive
It's nigh on impossible to find cheap wedding invitations that feel genuinely premium, as budget options typically can't achieve the entire luxury look. For example, a really elegant invitation design may look incredible on screen, but if your budget doesn't stretch to premium paper, the printed invite will end up looking and feeling cheap.
One way to achieve expensive-looking formal wedding invitations is to keep them brief. Limit the invitation to a single page, similar to a save-the-date card, and direct your guests to your wedding website. That way loved ones still get a premium-feeling memento of your special day, but at a fraction of the cost. Plus, you get all the advantages of a wedding website, such as design freedom, RSVP tracking, and the ability to share as much information as you like. And we offer all of those advantages for free!
Our wedding website builder will generate a short, custom URL for your online space that's ideal for placing on your printed invitations. Additionally, our easy-to-use website designer simplifies the process of personalizing your online space and visually coordinating it with your other stationery.
Looking for beautiful designs on a budget? Check out our wedding invitation design templates.
Start your free wedding website
PLANNING . WEDDING — is easy to remember and even easier to use.
- Discover How Easy it is to Save a Fortune on Save the Dates, Invites & RSVPs
- Cheap Wedding Invitation Options That Look Expensive
- DIY Wedding Invitations: Step-by-Step Guide
- Free Wedding Invitation Resources
- Affordable Online Printing Services
- Budget Wedding Invitation Timeline
- Money-Saving Tips for Wedding Stationery
DIY Wedding Invitations: Step-by-Step Guide
You want real DIY wedding invitations? Take them fully online! Gift yourself the power to control every aspect of their design, delivery, and tracking. Not sure how? Let's take you through the process step-by-step.
Create your free wedding website
To begin, provide us with a couple of details about your special day.
Choose a website template
You can easily customize our varied selection of website templates to match your theme.
Create a free wedding website URL
A fun and catchy domain name can be created in seconds, but it may take you longer to think up the perfect URL! Don't worry, you can change it as many times as you like if you change your mind.
Add your wedding details
If you're in the early stages of wedding planning and have not yet confirmed every detail, don't worry. Your wedding website will evolve as you progress. After each event booking, simply add in the information.
Upload your pictures and video
Whether you have professional engagement photos you'd like to share or would prefer your site to display shots from your journey thus far, we make it easy to upload. We even provide space for you to upload a video message or photo montage!
Set up your online RSVP
We give you the power to decide what information is required from guests and who sees certain information. Perfect if you want to ensure your bridal party is invited to the bridal shower and rehearsal dinner but don't want everyone else to be invited too. You can also add fun RSVP questions like song choices for the dance floor or requests for tips on a happy marriage!
Upload your guest list
Our free guest list tool is directly connected to our RSVP app, meaning as soon as a guest confirms or provides information, your guest list will be updated. Guests can be easily managed within the tool and uploaded from a spreadsheet if you've started your list offline.
Preview your wedding website
Step back and take in your premium, personalized wedding website on both desktop and mobile. Get a second opinion and check for potential errors by sending a website link to trusted friends and family before making it public.
Publish and send out your finished wedding website!
Direct guests to your published site via printed invitations, or simply send it out via group text or email.
Track every response all in one place
Watch the replies from loved ones drop into your guest list in real time, and then filter the results based on their responses and preferences.
Create affordable invitations now
Free Wedding Invitation Resources
We've found that couples who search for free wedding templates or downloadable invite designs often end up paying more than they expected in the end. So many sites and services offer free options, but they invariably come with hidden costs, like printing, for example.
Our wedding website builder and associated wedding planning apps are not just affordable; they're completely free, with no hidden catches. You can design a beautiful online wedding space, send it out to guests, and manage their replies without spending a dime.
If you're serious about cutting your wedding budget, then the best free wedding invitation resource is already available, alongside so many other useful planning tools.
Affordable Online Printing Services
The most affordable printing technique is to not print at all and keep your invitation 100% online. But if you would like guests to have a keepsake from your special day, why not combine your save-the-date and invitation into one single printed card?
Having some tangible wedding stationery that guests can pin to their fridge and keep hold of will certainly please many of your loved ones—especially Mom. While also being significantly cheaper than a full wedding invitation suite, especially if you keep it one-sided and use neutral colors. If many of your guests are local, you could also choose to mail your invites personally. That way, potentially the only cost is printing. Guests can then RSVP for free via your wedding website.
Consider going fully digital with our digital wedding invitations for maximum savings.
Budget Wedding Invitation Timeline
If you're short on time and your wedding budget is tight, taking invitations online will undoubtedly speed up your timeline. Our wedding website builder is so easy and intuitive to use that you could have a finished site in less than an hour, ready to publish and send out to guests. You'll love customizing and experimenting with your site, crafting it to perfection, and the great thing is that digital invitations can be edited whenever you like, even after they've been published.
Here's how a digital invitation can compress the average wedding timeline:
6 Months to the wedding - Website with key details published and sent out to guests.
12 weeks to the wedding - Update the site with all the finalized details for the day.
6 weeks to the wedding - Go through the guest list and nudge those yet to RSVP
3-4 weeks to the wedding - Complete your RSVP list. Finalize the seating plan and update your venue and caterers with the completed guest count.
1 week to the wedding - Update guests with any last-minute changes and reshare the link to ensure everyone has your wedding details at hand.
Money-Saving Tips for Wedding Stationery
Be smart with your wedding stationery choices, and you'll gift yourselves a whole chunk of change to spend on the big day itself! We may not have had a free wedding website when we planned our celebration, but we found some great cheap wedding invitations and were able to DIY a lot of stationery elements ourselves. This allowed us to allocate a slightly higher budget towards flowers and catering, two areas we were a lot more enthusiastic about.
Here are a few wedding stationery hacks that will give you more money to spend on what matters to you:
Use your wedding website as the hub and your invite as a link to unlock it
By creating a simple one-sided invite with just the key details and a wedding website link on it, you'll massively cut down the cost of printed stationery and avoid costly mistakes. Wedding websites essentially give you unlimited proofs, meaning if you spell something wrong or share a detail that subsequently changes, you don't have to spend hundreds on reprinting.
Collect as much RSVP information online as possible
Avoid sending physical RSVP cards, and you'll save a small fortune on extra inserts. Direct guests to your free online RSVP where they can provide all the information you need for the catering and accommodation teams, alongside plus-ones. This method is cheaper, faster, and so much more convenient for you and your family. As nobody has to take a trip to the post office, you'll receive their information as soon as they click send.
DIY wedding invitations
If you've got even a slight spark of creativity in you, and you want to save money, it's worth looking at DIY-ing your wedding invites. There are so many free or inexpensive wedding invitation templates to be found online that'll give you a good starting point and avoid the need to hire a costly graphic designer. Just ensure the template you buy allows you to export or share as you want and doesn't limit what you can do with it after designing.
Using our free online tools, you can not only design your wedding invitation for free but also DIY the rest of your wedding stationery! From place names and menus to seating plans and table numbers. There are so many stationery essentials you can tick off with us for free!
DIY and share your wedding invitations for free with Wedding Planning Assistant. Our all-in-one platform wedding website builder takes care of RSVPs, guest list creation, and many other stationery items. Leaving you free to spend more time having fun putting together the actual wedding, and less time stressing over the budget.
Start building your wedding website today.
Get started for free
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: