If you're hemming and hawing over where to put your wedding money, just remember the above picture if you're considering selling the farm for things like wedding programs.
If you're opting not to make your own invitations, one piece of advice I have is to get one fancy set for a keepsake (if you ask, some invitation folks will do the proof in the fancy stuff), then do the rest in a more cost-effective manner. For example, get one letterpressed or engraved invitation, and then have the rest thermographed or flat printed. The (approximate) 50% savings are staggering and just as nice.
We designed our programs, had them printed up at the local print shop, then gathered a trusty sweatshop to assemble them. i think the total cost of printing and cutting 100 programs in half was around — $8? i checked out a DIY wedding website for ideas on how to do them, and if i remember correctly, they were charging around $2.50 per program — the package included the two pieces of fancy paper with the program info on them and a wood stick to glue in the middle, but you still had to assemble them yourself.
Moral of the story? Pretty much, no matter how gorgeous the majority of paper goods you cash out on may be, they're going to end up in the recycle bin.
Hmmm – we designed our own invitations and had them printed by Vistaprint, and put all our wedding details online for guests to refer to. We’re not having any other stationery, except maybe placecards. Saved us a bundle of time, effort, paper and cash!
Katie..Spencer’s plan was to fly these DURING the ceremony…John told him he might want to rethink that! : ) Hence…under the chair they went. : )
Since programs end up as paper airplanes anyway, why not make that your theme? Do up some paper airplane programs and pass them out that way? That might be fun ..and funny… I do see your point though. I spent hours doing up my STDs and in the end, whats the point really? lol. I should have just done somethign up quickly and not spent soo much effort on THAT.
Hey Gin! that is stinkin’ hilarious! I had no idea that’s how the airplanes came to be–how sweet of Spencer to think of something so festive to do in our honor!
I guess I wont be having this fancy paper at my wedding in Dec. What a waste
Our wedding is going to be outdoors in August when its really hot. I was thinking for our programs, of cutting out a simple fan shape out of card stock and running a pretty ribbon threw the bottom. I figure they will be using the programs to fan theirselves anyways.
Going with the paper airplane trend, you could encourage the youngsters, or other people waiting for the ceremony, to have a competition, see who could design the plane that goes the farthest.