The Pros and Cons of Making Your Own Wedding Invitations

The task of making your own wedding invitations can look intimidating, especially if you've never taken on such a grand production as a wedding before. If you're not sure whether to make your own wedding invitations, considering the following pros and cons should help you come to a decision.

Pro: Wedding invitations provide a creative outlet if you make them yourself. If you tend toward real creative flair, and love making art or scrapbooking, making your own invitations could be a lot of fun.

Con: If you aren't the creative type, your handmade invitations might not end up looking very good unless you put a whole lot of concentration and effort into it. If you don't like being creative very much, this may not be for you.

Pro: Making your own wedding invitations opens up many doors for personalization. You can personalize the invitations according to the interests and information needs of your guests, but that's not all. You can also personalize according to the themes of your wedding ceremony and reception.

Con: Personalizing wedding invitations can take a lot of time and effort. You'll have to do a lot of browsing, planning and window-shopping, and then you'll have to make decisions about the details. All in all, it takes a lot more effort to make invitations than it does to purchase custom invitations.

Pro: Making your wedding invitations allows you a lot of freedom. If you have a mental picture of exactly what you want your invitations to look like, you might not be able to find a ready-made type of invitation that suits your personal needs - especially if your ideas came to fruition before you did any browsing. If you make your wedding invitations yourself, you'll be able to fit your own needs more closely.

Con: Making wedding invitations for a large crowd of guests could be practically impossible, considering all the affair's other bits and pieces to put together. If you're expecting a lot of guest, personalizing your wedding invitations is probably not a good idea.

Pro: If you want to save money, and one of your ways of doing this is by having a small wedding with only your closest friends and family members, you should definitely consider making your wedding invitations. Handmade invitations are a great way to personalize and save money for a small wedding, since having only a few guests minimizes the amount of work you'll have to do.

It is possible to find a compromise between personalized, less expensive invitations, and less personal, more expensive invitations. If you want to save a little time and a little money, purchase some plain, ready-made invitations of the less expensive kind. Then, include a few personalizations, like photos of the happy couple, personal messages, and maps of the general area.

Hopefully, the above pro-and-con list has helped you make an important wedding plan decision: will you make your own invitations, or won't you?