Especially with the crazy economy, a lot of our customers are looking for the best value for their dollar. Before we even talk about design, we want to know your budget so that we can offer you styles and designs to meet the needs of both your style and your pocketbook.

For made-to-measure, custom invitations, we offer a very competitive price. Some design decisions will also save you money. Here are some tips:

• Choose matte papers over metallic, especially for any big-ticket items such as pockets. Add metallic or patterned papers as accents or skip them altogether.

• If you are crafty, we do sell supplies so you can create your own invitations at home. Visit: http://envelopments.com/mye/indigo-envelope We also will print your own original designs.

• Avoid square designs, especially those over 6 by 6 inches. (Saves up to 40 cents per invitation on postage.)

• Consider high-quality digital press printing on a luxurious metallic linen paper. (Less than half the cost of other printing methods.)

• Hand-address your envelopes yourself. (This trims 50 to 70 cents per invitation.)

• Drop the old-fashioned inner envelope, as most of our customers have. (Saves 45 to 65 cents per invitation.)

• Choose RSVP postcards to save on postage and to eliminate buying return envelopes. (Saves up to $1 usually.)

• Assemble your invitations yourself, but do buy the recommended glue from us at a 20 percent discount. (DIY assembly saves 10 to 80 cents per invitation.)

• Go to Envelopments.com or come to our studio and choose an already developed design. We can customize  it for you, but this will still reduce design services costs. (We have the license to recreate all designs on Envelopments.com.)

• Consider including your Rehearsal Dinner invitation inside the envelopes with your wedding invitations for some guests. It saves on postage and envelopes (if you sent a separate invitation) and it helps your guests to plan their trip.

And finally, this won’t necessarily save you money, but…

Remember that your guests may also be concerned about planning a trip to your event. A lot of our couples are going out of their way to negotiate hotel discounts and include travel and destination information in their invitation packages, which encourages guests to participate in their celebrations by saving them a little bit of money on their travel expenses.

Remember that we do have a $500 minimum order per event because we are a small studio and can take only a limited number of customers each month. It is usually pretty easy for our customers to purchase invitations and other items to reach this amount.

We can help you to budget for many wedding design details, in addition to your invitations. Planning ahead usually helps our customers manage their overall budgets more effectively.