10 Wedding Stationery Jobs To Do This Weekend
As the nights are starting to get longer and the weather colder, cozy Saturday nights in are the perfect time to do some serious wedding planning. So light that new scented candle, open that bottle of wine and get that wedding planner out because here are ten wedding stationery jobs you can do this weekend to get them ticked off your to-do list!
1) Work out your wedding stationery budget
One of the most important wedding stationery jobs to get done first is to work out your wedding stationery budget. Good quality wedding stationery doesn’t have to cost the earth, but to get the best design and print quality you have to have a realistic budget. Fancy print finishes such as foiling, multiple pieces of card and other little Finishing Touches such as wax seals and custom location maps are where the price can really start to rise, so it’s best to work out what your wedding stationery budget is first before heading to Pinterest and seeing all that shiny foil and being disappointed when the cost is way out of your budget.
The average percentage of the overall wedding budget that gets spent on wedding stationery is 7%, so if your wedding budget is £35,000 the average stationery cost is around £2,500. This covers, save the dates, wedding invitations (including all the postage), on the day stationery pieces such as orders of service, menus, seating plans, table numbers and place name cards, plus thank you cards for after the big day, which is a lot of stationery! If you want the fancy little extra touches to take your stationery to the next level you will need to up the percentage of the budget to around 10%. Remember the more guests you have the more stationery you will need.
You can work out exactly how much everything will cost you with Wild Moon upfront by checking out my Price List page. As well as a downloadable price list you can also see some examples of what kind of budget you might need to get your dream stationery.
2) Decide what kind of wedding stationery you want
Once you have a budget set you need to decide what kind of wedding stationery you want. Think about what season you are getting married in, along with any themes or colour schemes you might have. Do you like simplicity? Or do you prefer full on florals? Maybe foliage is more your vibe? Use Pinterest to create a mood board to help you find ideas of things you like, always keeping your budget in mind. Remember gold embossed foiling might look amazing but it’s expensive, and the more pieces of paper you have the more it will cost you. Be mindful and realistic with your expectations and remember you usually get what you pay for.
You also need to decide what style of invitations you’d like. Would you like a little bundle of cards finished with a vellum belly band and wax seal? Or do you prefer the idea of having everything on one piece of card like my modern Concertina Folded Invites? Are there any Finishing Touches like a venue illustration or custom location map that are a must have? With so many options to choose from the best idea is to sit down and work out what you like, how much everything will cost and see what fits into your budget. You can view my full Price List to work out the cost of everything upfront and help you budget what you want, what you need and what you can afford.
With 16 Wedding Stationery Collections to choose from and customise the colours of, there’s a Wild Moon design for you to fall in love with! If you want something really unique to you as a couple and your wedding day, plus have a bigger budget to suite, then my Bespoke Design Service might be the choice for you!
3) Write your wedding guest list
Get your guest list written early so you can work out who will be invited and fill those precious spaces. Depending on your venue size and budget you might need to be a bit ruthless with who gets a wedding invite. Remember people can always be invited to your evening do instead to help with budgeting numbers. Once you have your guest list sorted you’re one step closer to getting your wedding stationery sorted too!
4) Work out how many wedding invitations you need to order
Once you have your guest list sorted you can work out how many save the date cards and wedding invitations you need to order. It’s usually worked out as one per household, not one per person. If you have a house share or over 18’s living at home still I always think it’s nice that they receive individual invitations too. So for example, if you have 100 day guests you might only need around 60 invites. Work out how many you need and then always add on around 5-10 more so you have some spares. These are great as keepsakes, to give to your photographer on the day to shoot professionally, or if your guest list changes because someone else can’t make. It’s always worth having a few extras printed and ready to go, especially as printing a small extra batch can be very costly, so make sure you order enough to begin with to cover these things.
5) Collect your guests’ addresses
A big headache you probably haven’t thought about is collecting everyone’s addresses to send your save the dates and wedding invitations out to. This can be a big task and should probably involve a spreadsheet! Collect everyone’s addresses up ready to address the envelopes yourself, or to send to me so you can get printed envelopes made to save your hands!
6) Work out your RSVPs
Work out how you want to collect everyones RSVP information, whether that’s getting everyone to send a card back to your address or including a special email address you’ve created especially for all your wedding admin on your invites. You can create a wedding email address through Google Mail. You might prefer a mixture of both. You can send RSVP’s with envelopes or opt for RSVP postcards so you don’t need to include extra envelopes at all, saving money and paper!
Create a spreadsheet to keep track of all the RSVP’s you get back, one for day guests and one for evening guests, this is especially important if you are collecting menu choices! You can use a Google Sheet document to do this for free and update it every time you get an RSVP back.
7) Sort out your wedding menu
Get a list of options from your wedding venue and start to work out what you’d like to include on your menus. Keep in mind anyone that might have dietary requirements or allergies, you might want to select gluten-free options, vegetarian or even vegan options so everyone is catered for.
Once you have your menus sorted you want to decide whether guests can select on the day or they have to “pre order” their menu options (your venue will decide this for you.) Usually you need to find out what everyone wants before hand so you will need to include your menu choices within your wedding invitations, either by including a separate menu card or including it on the back of your Concertina Folded Invitation, and make sure your RSVP has a way to collect everyone’s options.
Another thing to think about with your menus is whether you want to include menus on your wedding tables. You could have one or two menus on each table to remind people what’s on offer, or have one for each guest. You could also incorporate your place name cards into your menus too by personalising them. There are lots of options so best to decide early on what option is the best for you and how you want things to look.
8) Work out the wedding seating plan
A big wedding stationery planning headache is working out the seating plan. God forbid Aunt Sue should be put next to Aunt Sally! Use your guest list to work out who will sit where, whether that’s family tables, friends who know other friends, or mixing people up completely! The best way to do this is write everyone’s names on sticky notes and use a big board with your tables drawn on to work out where everyone should go so you can easily move them around! Another idea is to use Hitched.com’s seating plan feature, which is a great digital way of organising everything. Remember though, you can’t please everyone so don’t stress yourself out over this!
9) Decide on wedding table numbers or names
While thinking about your on the day stationery you can also work out whether you just want to simply number your tables or want to name them. A lot of couples decide to have some fun and inject some of their personalities into their big day by naming their wedding tables after things the are special to them as a couple. Whether that’s places they have visited together, favourite TV shows, favourite bands or anything else you can think of you can be as creative as you like and I love to see what you come up with! I’ve had couples that have used Game Of Thrones Houses, band they have seen live and even ‘Friends’ wedding themed episode titles (boy where those hard to make fit…)
10) Book your wedding stationery design slots
The last and most important wedding stationery job to do is book to make sure all your wedding stationery is in hand by Booking your places in my design diary. You can book spots in advance for save the dates, wedding invitations and/or your on the day wedding stationery, ticking more jobs off your to-do list and guaranteeing your places with me. Each slot is just a £50 deposit which is deducted from your final balance and once you’ve booked your slots you don’t have to do anything until I email you at the beginning of your booked month when I take your order. When you Book in advance you also receive a Welcome Pack containing tons of helpful information including a wording guide, plus I’m always on hand to help and to answer any of your questions. I can only take on so many clients per months so guarantee your places in my diary by Booking today.
Now it’s time to write your wedding stationery jobs to-do list
I hope you can use this list to help sort out some of these wedding stationery jobs that you might not have even thought about yet or have been putting off. If you have any questions or need any help with anything at all regarding your wedding stationery then don’t hesitate to contact me, I’m always happy to help.
Emily x
