Spiraling of the budget

from here (on a side note, the blog entry this picture came from is pretty funny, as I've definitely seen this in practice)

Weddings are expensive. They don't have to be, but they always end up that way. Those that opt to elope by themselves have made a wise decision - because, I'll admit, there are days that M and I probably wish we could do just that. But this is an occasion we want to share with our families and loved ones and there is no way of getting around that.

There are ways I've tried to cut costs, and some things have in their own worked out to be cheaper than other alternatives. For example, our reception venue did not charge any rental fees because we are serving full meals, and their catering costs are extremely reasonable. I managed to get save-the-date cards for less than $8. And I bought invitation card stock for about $25, thinking printing the invitations will not cost much more.

Well, unfortunately, I think the cost of printing the invitations is ridiculous! I'm trying to work out alternative ways to get the information across in the fewest cards to reduce printing costs, but I'm just not sure how realistic that is. I am not keen on the idea of printing the invitations on my own printer, as the quality is not great and my printer eats up a ton of ink. I didn't realize how the days are sneaking up on me, and my invitations go out in June, which is only 1.5 months away. I mean, it's May already - why didn't anyone tell me?!

So I need to get these things printed ASAP and start on the daunting task of painstakingly addressing each and every one of them, ever so lovingly.

I also dropped by the post office to see how much the invitation would cost to send, and lo and behold, it of course costs more than the average letter, so I will have to use more expensive stamps, that will be even more expensive after the price hike! Additionally, I'll have to purchase stamps for the RSVP cards. I'm all into being earth friendly and trying to do the e-mail/website/phone RSVP thing to save some paper and stamp costs, but I've heard awful things about website RSVP systems, and friends have been having less than desirable outcomes with their phone/e-mail RSVPs. So, traditional RSVP cards it is.

Boo. I thought I was going to be thrifty by buying and half-way DIYing my invitations, but it turns out that it may not really save any money at all!