What size wedding invitation should I make if I want to save on postage?

When it comes to making your own invitations, you should be concerned about mailing and postage first, last, and throughout the entire design process, whether you are concerned with the price of postage or not.

Before Designing Your Invitations, Find Your Wedding Envelopes!

Before even starting your design, it is recommended you choose wedding envelopes first. Although it may seem odd to choose envelopes before you have invitations to put inside of them, it is critical that you do. Keep in mind that an invitation can be altered to fit into an envelope, but an envelope can not be altered to accommodate an invitation. Envelopes are typically made to popular, standard industry sizes, and for this reason, envelopes of odd dimensions may be difficult, if not impossible, to find.

After finishing your ideal invitations, you don’t want to spend hour after frustrating hour searching for envelopes to accommodate them; or worse, learn that envelopes to accommodate your invitations don’t exist.

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Tips for Saving on Mailing Invitations

Steer Clear Of Unusual Size Envelopes – Avoid Additional Postage

When choosing envelope and invitation dimensions, remember that oddly shaped envelopes require additional postage. If you are on a tight budget, this is probably a factor you want to consider.

What is considered an “unusually shaped envelope”?

According to the United States Postal Service guidelines, any envelope that falls outside of the standard width and height parameters, or that weighs over 1 ounce, will require additional postage. Common examples include square envelopes, and vertically addressed policy envelopes.

If you are watching the price of your postage, you may want to design an invitation that fits inside of a standard, rectangular envelope.

Watching Postage? Design with Weight in Mind

As mentioned above, anything weighing over 1 ounce will require additional postage. By the time you include all of the components – invitation, reception, direction, response items – a typical invitation ensemble usually does weigh more than 1 ounce.

Although a bit of additional postage is hard to avoid, you can design your invitation with reduced weight, and reduced postage in mind. Here are a few tips for doing so:

• • Opt for lighter weight paper: For example, can you use an 80lb cardstock, instead of a 111lb?
  • Limit the number of insert cards: Do you need a direction card? Can your reception information fit on the invitation card? Might you use just one “additional information” card? Can you make the cards double-sided?
  • Use single envelopes, not double: Double envelopes are a wedding tradition, but are merely preference. Are they worth the extra weight, and possibly extra postage?

You may also like:

How to Find the Right Envelope Size  |  10 Ways to Save on Mailing Your Wedding Invitations  |  Wedding Envelopes  |  Response Envelopes