Coyote Invitation Cost Breakdown

Now that you've all seen the invitations, I wanted to talk a bit about what went into them. I spent a little more than I thought I would and I probably didn't save any money doing it this way, but at the end of the day I super big puffy heart our invitations and I'm happy I went this route. It all started with the design. I tried to make my own a few times, but nothing I created really stood out to Mr. Coyote, our parents, or me. After many failed attempts I decided that this project was important enough to take to the professionals. After browsing millions of designs and ordering wayyyy to many samples:

(That's only half of them!)

I stumbled upon Printable Press. With this company you can order print ready designs and then take them to a local printer or even print them yourself. The main invitation cost $79, the response card was $35 and the insert card was $37. I took the files they gave me and sent them off to Catprint. After much discussion we decided to go with their heavy cotton card stock and the printing came in just around $150.

The pieces ordered from Printable Press and printed by Catprint.

The directions card was designed and printed on heavy card stock by me. I managed to fit 10 little cards to a page so I didn't go through too much paper. The monogram on the belly band was one I created with help from Wedding Chicks. I printed it on white heavy cardstock and the backing was just 12x12 silver scrapbook paper. The monogram was about 2 inches by 2 1/2 inches and I think I managed to get about 20-25 monograms from each sheet. Let's just say my paper trimmer got a serious workout from cutting out all these little pieces!

I took advantage of a sale at Michaels for 25% off all ribbon and completely wiped out their supply of burgundy ribbon for the belly band. After layering all the pieces I then used tape runner to secure everything.

Finally, the inner and outer envelopes were purchased from Envelopper Ink. They were one of the few companies that offered both sets of envelopes without having to purchase an entire invitation suite. I printed the addresses and return addresses on the outer envelopes and then completely wiped out Michaels' supply of scrapbook paper to use as liners on the inner envelopes (they were having one of their 7 sheets for a $1 sales... How could I resist?!)

The outer and inner envelopes.

Total cost breakdown for 100 invitations:

Invitation, RSVP and Accommodations designs from Printable Press: $151
Printing and RSVP envelopes from Catprint: $150
Inner and Out Envelopes from Envelopper Inc: $53
Ribbon: $15 (This is an estimate as I misplaced the receipt!)
Cardstock for monogram backing and envelope liners: $5
Postage: $110
Total: $484*
Total per invite: $4.84

*This cost includes materials purchased solely for the use of assembling our wedding invitations. Other items such as:

• tape runner
• paper cutter
• plain, white cardstock (used for directions card and monogram)
• computer ink (used for directions card, monogram and envelopes)

are not included in this breakdown because they were pre-owned and used for other projects aside from our invitations.

So there you have it! It's crazy how quickly the costs add up and yes there were things we could have done to lower the costs (been a bit more patient and created the design myself for instance. Or choose a less fancy and therefore less expensive paper for printing), but the truth is I am crazy in love with these invitations and would probably do it all over again if given the choice.

Did you have any projects that ended up costing more than you expected?