Cheap Wedding Programs and Place Cards

By the time brides and grooms are done ordering their wedding invitations and paying for calligraphy services and postage on over-sized, overweight mailings… they are tapped out, both mentally and financially.  So the same brides and grooms who ordered fancy invitations often ask me “How can I get my wedding programs cheap?” and “Do I really need to pay a calligrapher to do my escort sets?”

Here’s the skinny on printed wedding accessories. Your programs and place cards are actually going to be at your wedding. They need to look neat and organized. They need to add and not detract from your event. As long as they are nicely printed, and are on simple white or ivory stock, you will be fine.

So, how do you save on printed wedding accessories?

Wedding programs are costly in nature, especially if they are in booklet form.  Think about it, they are really much more complicated than the invitation. Although they do not need to be engraved, they are usually multi-paged, and held together with a ribbon or tassel. The best way to avoid heavy printing fees is DIY. We stock wedding program covers stock, which is already drilled and scored. The insert pages are sold separately. We sell neutral colored spools of ribbon, or you can use your own. By printing your own programs and assembling them, you save hundreds of dollars, and your program will be a meaningful project.

If you are not a “do it yourselfer”, we find that the zigzag folded program is a great way to go. For a simple program with six panels of copy, you can avoid printing extra leafs and binding fees.

As for escort sets and place cards, the honest truth is that if you have neat handwriting, you can write them out yourself. There is nothing in the etiquette books saying that you must have your seating cards done in calligraphy. Most of us do not have neat handwriting, since we tend to text and type missives these days. We do sell white and ivory place card stock that comes on 8.5” by 11” sheets, 4 up. If you are talented at using your computer and printer, you can save a bundle creating a template and printing the fold over escorts and place cards yourself.

And that’s all she wrote!