In today’s economy, frugality is more important than ever. And one of the best ways to stretch your wedding budget dollars is to include as many do-it-yourself projects as possible. One great DIY option that can save you some green is printing your very own wedding invitations, rather than having a stationery custom print them for you. Sound time-consuming? Not really. With even a run-of-the-mill bubble jet printer, a good font or two, and a step-by-step kit, you’ll be on your way to great-looking customized invitations in no time that you can do right at home.

There are a ton of amazing fonts available online, many for free. Just do a Google search for “free fonts” to see what’s available. Websites like 1001 Free Fonts (www.1001freefonts.com) will let you view, compare, and download True Type Fonts which you can then install on your PC or Mac for no cost at all. With all the options out there, you’re sure to find a font that matches your style and personalities perfectly.

Individually purchasing your paper, envelopes, linings, and embellishments isn’t for the faint of heart. To go this route, you want to make sure you have plenty of time or help, a smaller guest list, and you should have a real love of working with paper to create your own stationery totally from scratch. But for a cost-effective and time-saving compromise, check out the many DIY invitation kits on the market right now.

I personally recommend products from Gartner Studios (www.gartnerstudios.com), which we used ourselves for our own rehearsal dinner invitations. I can vouch for their product quality and craftmanship. I was also very kindly invited to tour their charming Stillwater, Minnesota location recently and I have seen firsthand the thoughtfulness and attention that goes into their product designs.

You can find Gartner Studios’s products at many craft and retail stores, as well as online. Their Bride’s Magazine collection is available at Michael’s, for example, and they have a line of products you can find at Target as well. The great thing about these DIY invitation kits is that you get all the materials you need along with the Word templates to set up your content. You can browse the templates for each product on their website. Some have more than one template: one for response cards and another for the vellum invitation insert, for example. Using these kits is really a snap, and by viewing the pricing online you can see how much you’d be saving with the kits versus ordering everything printed at a stationer.

Photo Credits: Font screenshot from 1001freefonts.com. Product imagery from Gartner Studios.