Before I tell you all about this wonderful site, first I wanted to give you four great reasons why you should make your own wedding invitations.
1) Originality! You will never find something in the store that you design yourself. Unless your friends copy off of you after your wedding, no one will have the same invites as you! And even if they do copy you, well that’s just the greatest form of flattery so you should be happy that your creativity inspired them.
2) Price! I spent about 331 dollars on paper and got enough for all my invitations, response cards, place cards, thank yous, programs and favors! I know I still have to pay for ink to print them, but overall it was around 400$ for all of that. Some people will spend that much on invitations alone, where as I have everything for the same price.
3) Everything can Match! After my sister picked out her invitations, she had a hard time designing programs, placecards, thank yous and tags to match. Since I designed my own invitations, I could easily make matching programs, placecards, and even origami favors to match! All I needed to do was order more paper.
4) Work on Your Schedule! I didn’t have to make multiple trips to an invitation place to work out the details. Since I was making these myself, it was purely up to me to get to work on them whenever I felt like it. I started my invites almost 11 months before the wedding, way ahead of most brides schedules. If I got motivated late at night, I would throw a few favors and invites together. If you order invitations, you don’t have control of the schedule. Since I was making them myself, I could make them partially even if I didn’t have all the wedding information yet.
What is it?
Here are a few definitions for those of you who may be wondering what I’m going to be talking about below.
–Vellum: This is transparent paper that is usually used as an overlay or inside of a card. There are various “weights” that go from incredibly see-through to pretty opaque. You should order samples because it’s hard to tell on the site what it will look like
–Cardstock: This is a thicker paper that is harder to bend/fold. It’s perfect for invitations and placecards and the like because it’s not flimsy. Once again, there are different weights so order a few samples to get a feel for what each weight number means.
–Textweight: This is the 3rd type of paper you will find on the site and it basically means it’s about the weight of a paper you would normally use in your printer. It’s flexible so you can use it for many things.
–Petal Cards: These are “cards” that are square and when opened the four sides look like a flower. You can close the petals in to overlap each other.
–Metallic: Most the paper I ordered was “metallic” meaning it had a shiny quality that just made it look extra nice. This category of paper was my favorite!
Besides envelopes, these are the main products the site sells.
Okay, so here we go!
When I was ready to start planning my wedding, I started on PaperandMore.com (referred to as PM.com). My sister had actually bought some very cheap packs of cardstock here which is how I found the site. I didn’t even know what colors my wedding would be, so I started by ordering dozens of samples. PM.com only charges 50 cents to 1.50 for each sample you order (1.50 is for the bigger things, most papers are only 50 cents). The shipping rate for all samples is only 1$! So you should order as many samples as you can at one time and you’ll only be paying 1$. I think they do this to entice you to order from there. After you see the paper in person you will undoubtedly love it.
I ordered samples of every single vellum and cardstock on the site that I thought I might want to use. I ended up getting a huge mix of colors and patterns. I went through the pack holding different combos up to each other until I ultimately decided the Lavender Cardstock with the Pastel Yellow Vellum was perfect for my spring wedding. If you are unsure what colors you want for your wedding theme, I suggest doing this as well. It’s fun and you get to see samples of all different papers from the site.
Got the colors, but what should I do with them?
The next step for me was to order more samples of the Lavender and Pastel Yellow colors that I liked, including envelope and petal card samples. I tried various designs, measurements and cuts to design what my invites should look like. You should really spend time on this part because you wouldn’t want to order the paper and then change your mind and need more or less. One thing I kept thinking was that “I could always order more paper!” but I didn’t want to end up ordering too much more than I needed.
While you are designing samples, you should also pay attention to how hard it is to make these invites. If it’s taking you hours to put together one sample, do you really think you’ll spend that much time making the entire batch of invites? Of course it may take some time to make the first sample, but if the second/third samples are taking you the same amount of time – it may not be a realistic design.
Ordering now!
Once I knew exactly how much paper I would need for my designs, I placed the order. Paper comes in packs of 50 or 100, but if you wanted only 10 or so, you could order 10 samples instead. I ended up ordering 2 packs of metallic lavender petal cards, 2 packs of matching envelopes, 2 packs of matching response envelopes, and 5 packs of matching cardstock to make the various things I needed. I also ordered 2 packs of pastel yellow vellum and 1 pack of bright white cardstock for the accents to my designs. This cost 327$ and the shipping was a flat rate of only 4$! Ordering is a breeze and there are no complicated sign up procedures. Just order and go! I was most surprised that even though the total weight of the packages I ordered was 34 pounds – they still only charged my 4$!!! It was great!
FYI: The store also offers a cutting service, but they don’t let you keep any left over scraps. I felt it was better for me to cut the paper myself so that I could A) be sure exactly what size I wanted to cut them and B) get to keep any scraps for other things – I was paying for it and I wanted the entire sheet of paper! A paper cutter can be found at Kinkos, or you can buy one yourself from OfficeMax for about 60$.
What’s going on?
This store is great on keeping in touch. Even when I only ordered samples they always sent plenty of emails to update me on the status. For example, I ordered the bulk of my paper on 6/8 and got an email confirmation automatically. A few hours later I received an In Process notification… a few hours after that I received a “shipped” notification with a handy tracking link. I received all my paper on 6/14 just as the UPS schedule had stated. Although the samples I ordered came via FedEx in a regular envelope, the stacks of paper I ordered came in a box filled with foam and wrapped firmly in bubble wrap – all the sheets were in perfect condition.
The End
I absolutely love this paper! My invitations and favors came out great and I couldn’t wait for everyone to receive them. Everyone who has seen my designs has been excited, and they are definitely original. There are many reviews on the site itself of other brides saying they made their own invites using PM.com paper, so I guess I wasn’t totally original, but at least I have never received an invite quite like the ones I’m sent out. If you want to see what I did with my PaperandMore.com paper, visit the link below. Enjoy your crafts!!!!
