Dollars and Sense

So, wayyyyy back when I first got it in my head that we (I) wanted to DIY invitation, I figured it would be cheaper than buying them. I knew it would take LOTS of man hours but I figured the end result would be pretty inexpensive. Well, I was wrong. I was also right. You see, we ended up spending WAY more than I thought but significantly less than we would have for similar purchased invitations.

After getting all of our invitations out, I sat down with my receipts (ok e-mails) and figured out how much we spent on invites. As I tabulated, my eyes just about popped out of my head! I SPENT HOW MUCH?! Turns out I had spent a chunk-o-change over the months that it took to compile the invites and I must not have noticed it adding up! However, a quick peek at the internet shows I did get pretty good value. While they were more than planned, similar designs would have run anywhere from $5-12 each before postage!

Enough of my Yip Yapping, here's the breakdown:

~$41.47 for the "free" RSVP cards from Vista print. (loading your own art/mat paper/shipping charges)     ~$40.46 for sealing wax. I got 12 sticks because each was supposed to do 8-10 seals. I only used 4...          ~$196.18 from paper source, includes outer envelopes, bifolds, petal envelopes and belly-band paper
~$25 Wax stamper
~$25 Copies at Staples. Printed on off-white card stock, cute in 4.
~$40.92 Postage for RSVPs (We used 44 cent stamps even though they were post cards because we         could not buy the postcard stamps before the price hike and we wanted to send them out before that)
~$78.12 Postage
GRAND TOTAL:
$447.15

Divide that by the 93 invitations and you have $4.81 each with postage. I do feel like this number is a bit high, because it includes 8 wax sticks I still can use for other things (and will!) as well as extra envelopes and paper that can, and have, been re-purposed.

In fact if you take postage out of the equation all together, that $1.28 less per invite, which is $3.53 each. $3.53 is MUCH closer to the $2-3 dollar per invite range that I was imagining. Of course, I should add, that number was based on nothing but my imagination.

I hope you found this helpful! I know I had no clue what the cost would be going into it, and just by chance and tons of man-hours later, we were in budget(ish).

Are you going the DIY route? Did it save you money?