Wedding Planning Tips: Saving Money

With Valentine's Day and my 6 months of being married right around the corner, love is in the air! That gave me the idea to share a post related to wedding planning since I never did finish sharing my tips. Even if you haven't planned a wedding yet, you know that it takes a lot of time, effort, and money. Today I'm sharing with you some ways you can cut costs when it comes to the paper/printed items. These are some things I did for my own wedding that I believe saved me a little bit of money that I put towards things I personally felt were more important. I'm not saying you shouldn't spend tons of money on invitations and the like, but it just wasn't what I personally wanted.

So whether you’re engaged, know somebody who is engaged, almost engaged, or just want to read for fun, here are some money saving tips I have when it comes to paper/printed items!

Postcard Save the Dates

If you decide to send save the dates, you can cut costs by making them postcards! Postcard stamps in the US are only 35 cents while a regular stamp is 55 cents. That may not seem like a huge difference, but when you're talking about sending out 150 save the dates, that's a $30 savings! We designed ours on our own and then printed them through VistaPrint for even more savings.

Design Invitations Yourself & Order on VistaPrint

We were lucky enough to have a Photoshop-savvy family member who designed our invitations for us but we probably would have figured it out ourselves if need be. Once the invitations were designed, we kept an eye on VistaPrint for a discount. VistaPrint is always offering deals so my suggestion is to get your design done early enough that you have the time to wait for a deal. 

RSVPify

RSVPify is a website where your guests can RSVP online using their email or a specific code you generate for each guest. This will save you the cost of a stamp and possibly even an envelope for guests to return their RSVP cards. The website does have a fee (starting at $29) if you have over 100 guests, but most likely that fee will be outweighed by the cost of everything else you'd need to purchase for the response cards. Also, RSVPify is super customizable. John and I went back and forth with them to come up with a package that worked best for us. Along with guests being able to RSVP online, you are provided with a seating chart tool to seamlessly create your reception seating chart. Oh, and no more response cards getting lost in the mail :)

Print Seating Chart

Individual place cards to tell guests where their table is can add up. Instead, create a seating chart that can be posted at the entrance to the reception that lists who is sitting at which table. This can be done fairly inexpensively if you do it on your own and not through a designer. We purchased a template off Etsy for just a few dollars, edited it on computer, and then printed it through Staples for about $10. You may be able to do individual place cards for each guest for cheaper but just think of the time you save by printing the chart!

Wedding Resources I Love

I was originally going to post a recap of the race I did last week, but decided to put that off to do a wedding related post instead! Yesterday, July 9th, marked one month until our wedding! I am super excited and in full wedding mode so today's post is about the websites that have proved to be the best resources for us during this whole planning process. Some are a little more obvious than others but I hope you find them useful whether you're currently engaged, almost engaged, or know someone who would benefit from these websites!

The Knot
This is probably the most obvious one! My suggestion after first getting engaged {after celebrating, of course!} is to make an account through The Knot. You may not know your date yet, but that's okay! The Knot provides so many useful articles with every tip and trick you didn't know you needed to know. Once you have your date, The Knot will create a checklist for you with deadlines for each task that you need to complete in order to plan your wedding. You also will have access to a free wedding website {it's soo easy to use!}, a budgeter, a timeline planner, and more!

Source

RSVPify
This was a resource that was recommended to us by my sister and her husband. RSVPify allows you to simplify RSVPing by putting everything online for a small fee! The set up is easy, although John did most of it so I can't say too much about it. You import your guest list into the website, separating each couple or family into their own grouping, and then assign each person/couple/family a unique code that they will enter on the site when they go on to respond. You can personalize the form with meal choices and questions such as song suggestions. Once people start responding, you can begin placing them in table groups which another awesome feature on RSVPify. It has honestly simplified this part of the process for me immensely and saved us a good amount of money since all we needed to make was a small insert card for each invitation with the information on it.

Etsy
Etsy was an absolute life saver when it came to many wedding purchases. Guest book? Etsy. Gifts for our parents? Etsy. Cake server? You guessed it, Etsy! We were able to find so many unique items on Etsy and always had tons of options, especially when I had no clue what exactly I wanted like the cake serving set. Anything you may need for your wedding, I guarantee you can probably find it on Etsy!

Groomsshop
John came across this online store while searching for gifts for the groomsmen and its great! We were at a loss as to what to get his guys as a present and after looking at the options on here, we then had trouble narrowing down our choices. There are a lot of unique ideas, most of which you can personalize. The item we chose came in a set of 5 for a great deal, which worked out perfectly!

Question of the Day: If you’ve planned a wedding or are planning a wedding, do you have a favorite wedding resource? If not, have you heard of one that sounds cool?