Hi Ladies - I've seen soo many beautiful DIY invitations on this board. My guest list is about 400 people, but since about 80% of them are out of town guests and my wedding is on a holiday weekend, we are estimating that only about 200 will accept. I'm probably going to send out about 200-300 invitations. It seems like most of the posts, brides were saying they made about 100 (max) and it took 3-5 hours.

- Has anyone created 200-300 DIY invitations?

- How long did it take? (hours & number of people)

- Is it worth the savings?

- Any tips?

I was thinking of doing the folded invites with the pockets.

Thanks!

Honestly, and I'm not speaking from experience here... I think with THAT many, you could find a great deal somewhere. Generally the more invites you get, the cheaper they are per invite. Unless you have a very specific vision for your invites that you don't think anybody could do but yourself, I would try scoping out some commercial ones.

If you are making your own pocketfolds, 200-300 would be VERY time consuming. If you bought all the pieces and assembled yourself, it might not be tooo bad... I don't know. I'm kind of just thinking out loud here.

Try looking into 123print.com.  They have some really nice invitations for cheap.  Then you could insert their printed invitation into a pocketfold.

i think it depends on how complex your diy invitations will be.  if its simple and just flat cards, it may not be that time consuming to make that many.  but if you are planning on making everything from scratch and the invitation suite is complex (i.e. pocketfolds, ribbons, bling..) it may be extremely time consuming.

maybe you can go the semi-diy route like some of pw brides and buy those invitation kits and all you have to do is print and embellish with whatever you want to save some time...

but diy'ing our invitations saved us money.

mscin -- I did flat cards for my invitations and it took me a good bit of time to do 70.  Just for reference, traditional invitations can take just as much time as pocketfolds.

The key would be to keep it simple.  If you buy pre-made pocketfolds and you are just gluing on the invitation and sticking in the inserts, it probably wouldn't take very long.  If you are adding ribbon, gems, embossing, etc. or if you are cutting and folding your own pocketfolds, this could be an overwhelming project.

We have about 120 people on our list right now.  I am planning on designing them myself, and assembling myself, but getting them printed elsewhere.  I don't trust my printer to do it without a lot of headaches and frustration on my part.  I'm also not making them hugely complex- it wouldn't fit our wedding in addition to taking a lot of time.  I'm still trying to make up my mind about a pocketfold or not.

I've done orders for brides that are about 200 invites. It takes my FI and I about 4 hours to do an order this size. We had them printed at Kinko's and then cut them out and assembled at home.

We purchased the pocketfolds through cardsandpockets.com.

- Is it worth the savings?

I'd definitely say yes! you can easily DIY these pocket fold invites for less than $3 each if you plan your printing carefully. Just try to fill up each page with as many inserts/invites as you can pack onto one page. This reduces your printing costs by reducing the number of pages you need to print.

If you take your own 8.5 by 11 sheets of card stock (which you can buy in colors from sellers like cardsandpockets.com or in white from places like staples.) Kinko's prints for $0.49 per page. 

Cost Breakdown:

If your doing 5x7 invites you can print the invite 2 to a page and that makes the invite itself $0.24 each.
You can easily print 2-4 or more of the inserts on one 8.5 by 11 sheet so those will run you about $0.13 to $0.24 each

The pocket fold itself is usually $0.98 for a matte and $1.38 for a metallic through cardsandpockets.

Envelope 0.17
RSVP envelope $0.12

Total: $2.63 per invite

 If your doing this many I'd definitely recommend investing in a good paper cutter you can use at home. I'm not a big fan of the ones at kinkos.

It seems like most of the posts, brides were saying they made about 100 (max) and it took 3-5 hours.

 I'm making 100 invitations, and it has taken me countless days of buying, planning, fiddling on the computer, cutting, gluing, stuffing, stamping, etc. I'd say in total, my invitations have taken about 30 hours so far...and more to come. That being said, mine are very detailed. I bought the pocket folds from cards and pockets, glued on a mat, made a map, rsvp, belly band, invite itself, etc. Creating the files on the computer took about half of the time.

- Is it worth the savings?

Yes, definitely. Although my invitations are going to cost the same as one quote that I got, they're going to be much more detailed and have extra inserts etc. I'm spending the same, but getting much much more.

When you're budgeting, remember that things like glue can cost a fortune. Those roll-on glue tape runner thingys can be bought at the dollar store, but can only stick on like 30 invitation mats. Multiply that by the number of invitations, menus, programs, and whatever other paper things you're making, and that's a lot of money spent on glue!

- Any tips?

Enlist help. I'm a control freak, and I worried that people wouldn't cut straight or glue on properly...I found that my mom and I worked together best if she did things like apply the glue and then I'd stick it on so I knew that it was straight and I could inspect it before sticking it down.

Good luck!

I have to agree with MissAshley. I did about 100 invitations too and they took me 4 or 5 hours per day for over a week. I did DIY pocketfolds instead of buying pre-made ones. All the cutting, assembling, printing took a long time. And that was after I spent quite a while deciding on a design and re-working the wording on the computer.

I did save a lot of money on mine, but they took a very long time. Thankfully, we were able to use my mom's scrapbooking supplies to help with the costs... so we didnt have to purchase fancy paper cutters, she already had them.

The two things that really added up were postage and double-stick tape.Definitely shop around for the tape or glue... you will most likely need more than you first expect.

To me, it was definitely worth the savings... but mostly because I was very proud of them. The accomplishment of getting them all done and knowing they were 100% DIY was great. So, even if they had cost the same as professional invites, I would still DIY them again.

thanks again for the feedback. I'm definitely going to DIY. Any recommendations for cardstock?

thanks,