DIY Wedding: Save The Dates Under $5

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If you’ve been keeping tabs on my social media, you know I’m engaged!

Thinking about marrying Seb is one of the few things that gets me emotional, so I’m going to save our story for another day. Today I want to talk about DIYing your wedding. More specifically, how you can save money by making your own DIY Save The Dates – for $5!

Nope, that isn’t a typo; five dollars for fifty Save The Dates.

(Side note: I’m trying really hard not to call them “STDs” because Brooklyn 99 is my all-time favorite show and my inner Boyle is dying to use acronyms. Don’t judge me.)

You’re probably thinking I’m crazy. Am I right? I mean, there is no way I managed to mail 50 cards for only $0.10 apiece.

Well, you’re partially right. I made them for $5, but it cost me way more for postage. Damn USPS just keeps bumping up stamp prices. It almost makes me want to do electronic invitations – but I won’t, because that’s tacky and so 2001.

Here’s a breakdown of the supplies I purchased/used from JoAnn Fabrics.

12×12 Cardstock: 12 pieces at $0.15/ea = $1.80
12×12 Craft Paper: 13 pieces at $0.15/ea = $1.95
Washi Tape: one 3-roll pack at $0.99 = $0.99
Double-sided Tape: multiple rolls, already on hand
TOTAL SPENT: $4.74

After tax, my total purchase was $5.07. I went in during a sale on the cardstock, which is how I managed to get my paper at such a low price point. The Park Lane washi tapes were also discounted. Overall, most of my savings was due to choosing the right time to shop. Make sure you sign up for JoAnn emails online or in their app so you can get deals as good as mine.

Now the fun part – making the DIY Save The Dates.

I’m still fairly new to using my Cricut, so I decided to choose a cut design that was on Cricut Access. I did change it up a little bit to fit our style, and chose to create a simple 3.5×3.5 layered card.

Once the cards were cut and printed, I taped them together using my Duck double-sided tape. I highly recommend using this tape for layered cards. It went on smoothly and effortlessly. Glue dots are another option I like, but they tend to take a little longer with placement.

For the envelopes, we used a one-sided print craft paper.

What I loved about the paper we used is how it gave a little extra “pop” when the envelopes were opened by our guests. The outside appears white since the pattern only shows on the inside of the envelope. I thought this was a fun way to add pattern into our DIY Save The Dates.

Truthfully, this is the first time I had ever made an envelope from a plain sheet of paper. I had to consult Pinterest for a quick tutorial, and found this one to be the most helpful! I ended up cutting each sheet of paper into four 6″ squares in order to have envelopes that fit our 3.5″ cards. But I had to adjust them a little from the tutorial since I wanted square envelopes. They turned out perfect!

And that was it – we had our DIY Save The Dates for $5!

We stuck a little bit of lemon print washi tape on the envelopes to seal them, addressed them, added stamps, and mailed them out. Easy enough, right? Unfortunately a few days after we mailed our DIY Save The Dates we found out another major life event was happening on the same date we had chosen. #yikes

To remedy this – and instead of taking hours to make entirely new cards – we opted for an even simpler announcement card through Canva. With a quick print job, some paper cutting, and a lot more double-sided tape, our new DIY Save The Dates were ready to go. We officially survived our first wedding day crisis, months before the actual wedding. Yay us!

Have a Cricut and want to use my design? See my project here.
Don’t have a Cricut yet, but want one? I use the Explore Air 2.
Just looking for an easy printable design? Use my template in Canva.