Bilingual Invitations

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Also used vistaprint with designs I made myself. Ordered other laser cut envelopes though.

We did Vista print! My partner designed them herself and we ordered them through them. They did a great job! They look great! We ordered regular matte paper and envelope seals to match. I also got them to send me the wedding sample pack, and I'm glad they did. They have lots of nice options for paper and things they offer.

They also have super easy to use templates if you want to design them yourself on their website!
We waited for a 60% off coupon to come around, but they usually have some sort of deal on!

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That's interesting info to share Sara.

I've just begun the process as well in which I'm looking into creating even an electronic invitation but also looking at having some paper invites in which I would like to do the same thing for printing them but I have yet to shop for nice paper stationary stuff to put together a package together. I am not so much focusing totally on cost savings but more so to making ourselves which to me is more meaningful than just getting it done commercially. Cost savings is a bonus of course :-). But I will have to check out your suggestion...

JGD

View quoted message Thanks a bunch

To save on invitation costs when it comes to sending them overseas. look into vistaprint. and translate the invitation to French yourself.
they always have good discount codes. you could print front and back (one side invite, one side details/wedding website/wedding email etc).
just to have less weight in the envelope.
stamps are probably the most costly part of wedding invitations (if you aren't doing laser cut or embossing or other fancy stuff).
to save on stamp costs. we are doing online RSVP's. but paper invite.

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That's what we did for ours. Bought sets at Michaels, went to my FMIL and printed it with her really good printer. They have their own templates that you can use, or if you know any graphic designers they can help you out too - that's why we got help from FMIL

Also, if you go that route, they have tons of 40% off or 50% off coupons like all the time - bring a few friends if you need to buy several boxes and you save a ton. I think we spent like $70 in total for 90 - this includes: invitation, details, envelope, rsvp and rsvp envelope + some fancy ribbon as the decoration.

We’re doing our invites one style but multiple languages. Some in French, English and Italian and it’s all included in the price. They might charge more if you’re changing the style for the French ones

I am getting my invitations done at Staples Print Centre... I've already ordered 8 different samples to pick from and they are really nice (if you don't need the 3D/cut out/fancy invites).

They have French and English options for many of their invites, so you'd just order how many of each you would need. If you get it on a sale, they are under $1 per invite. My invites, with detail inserts, plus envelopes, for about 70 (one per household, plus extra), is going to be under $100.

View quoted message Oh Marie-Claire, I love the idea of the French on one side and the English on the other. Your friend that did that was very smart, plus I’m sure she saved quite a bit of money that way. The other way is cute to if you know which guest need English and which need French so your not sending 2 invitations to everyone. What a great suggestion

We used Vista Print for our save the dates and invitations. They were very cost affective specially when you can get them on the 40-50% off sales. I would have your FH write the French ones, that way you know 100% that the translation is correct. So exciting, and have a blast planning, that 2 years will go quick... trust me 😉

We are doing all of our own! We sent out our save the dates already and they cost about $40 in materials plus postage. Invitations will probably cost about $160 plus postage but its so much cheaper this way and a lot more personal!

View quoted message We printed invites for a friend's wedding. She just used her home printer but make sure it's decent printer. You can get packages at Micheal's and online with blank cards and envelopes included. So once you have your template filled in (some come with one) you just load the blank cards and hit print.

Thanks for the advice, everyone! When you say you printed them yourselves, what do you mean by that? Do you need a special printer?? I am totally clueless!

My invitations were in French, but I'm not sure that counts since we're both French speakers, as are pretty much all our guests.

I have however recently received two wedding invitations from friends who have French and English speaking guests (both paper invitations). One friend simply had one language on each side so that everyone received the same thing. And the other had two different versions of the same invitation, one in each language (everything else was identical).

If your French skills are good enough, I'd suggest writing the text yourself. I wouldn't trust a printing company to translate text (and anyway, I think it would be better to write the invitations in French than to translate them, as some of the formulations are very different and might not translate well).

You can find tons of French templates on the Internet, that could be a good start. And if you're not confident in your French skills, ask a French speaker to review your text.

Our invitations are bilingual (Dutch being the second one) too, we just separated ours since we also wanted to include some extra information in the Dutch one. The rest of it is exactly the same, just translated. We added some extra inserts with travel info and hotel block booked and stuff like that for the Dutch version.
We've decided on making and printing it ourselves to save on costs, postage could have been high but we gave our save the dates to family when they were here and will bring our invites themselves over and also send them from the Netherlands or give them wherever possible to people.

If you were getting them done in print then you could just have English on one side and French on the other but I'm not sure about online evites if they have that ability. I would say if you are doing online invitations then feel free to change the look of them up but it's not necessary - however I would translate them myself due to computer errors with translations.

Invitations for 2 languages can be done on one design if you want to save more. Going 2 designs may depend on the styles and slightly higher cost for the passport invitation.

Have you tried vistaprint site to get updates for discounts. Its a thought and have many varieties to choose from. Plus you can add texts where needed.