Day 7: Saving Money on Stationary: Save-the-Dates, Invitations, and Thank Yous

I have been a Shutterfly addict since I found out about the site. I love the quality and the prices are really reasonable too. The thing I love most about Shutterfly is their promotions. I love taking advantage of their super cheap prints as well as their other deals.
The best piece of advice I can give is to stock up on Shutterfly coupons, credits, etc. They always have some sort of deal, and 99% of the time they send new coupons in with your order.

When we were looking to order our Save-the-Dates, I happened to have received a 10 free cards promotion. It may not seem like much, but it did save some money, and they were exactly what we wanted.
When I was looking for layouts, I anted the most simple, yet most customizable card I could find. I came across this and fell in love. We ordered 100. We paid for 90 because of the 10 free card promotions. I was also able to use an old credit I had on my account for $25.
The total for our Save-the-Dates was about $70. This may seem like a lot, but it definitely paid off later.

For our invitations we didn't choose to go the Shutterfly route. What I wanted was too specific, and it was not possible with their layouts. I instead turned to Etsy.  I came across a store called Boots and Burlap. All of her designs were super cute and completely customizable. I told her what I wanted, she designed it and sent my PDFs for $10.

I shopped around for print prices. From what I found, Office Max was the cheapest. However, I was lucky, and was able to print all of the invitations at one of my bridesmaids offices. It saved a ton of money, and were very high quality.

One tip I would give, would be to not print invitations at home. In my experience, home printers go through ink really fast and do not produce the best quality. There are a lot of places, such as colleges, office supply stores, etc., that will print things for fairly inexpensive. If you have access to a professional quality printer, use it (just make sure its ok with your boss first)! You can have professional quality invitations for less!

I also ordered pocket sleeves for our invitations. I ordered these from Cards and Pockets.
Their Signature Pocket sleeves only cost $0.63 each and their corresponding envelopes were $0.23 each.

               

Lastly, you have to send Thank You cards. I have not had the time to fill out and send them yet, but I did get them ordered and just got them in.

Our save-the dates came with a 40% of coupon. Since I did not use Shutterfly for out wedding invitations, I decided to use this coupon for our thank you cards. I ended up spending $30 for all of them.

So the final word is... when looking for stationary, look for deals an discounts. There are tons of card making sites, and you can almost always find some kind of coupon for them. With coupons you can get exactly what you want for less.
Also, like always, shop around. I looked at multiple pocket fold websites before I found Cards and Pockets. I'm so glad that I didn't give up because the other sites charged twice what I paid.


This is day 7 of a 31 day series. To see the rest, click here.

 

 

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