Stationery Cost of $100k Wedding

Discussion Forums General Zazzle Discussion
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I sometimes lurk in a wedding group where it is common for people to post cost break-downs. A recent one for an April wedding tops the charts as most expensive one I’ve ever seen at $101K. And that is just for the day-of; doesn’t include rehearsal dinner, bachelorette/bachelor parties, showers, engagement party/photos, bridesmaids/groomsmen proposal boxes, travel costs, etc …

After picking my jaw up from the floor I was able to look at the details. They spent $7,000 on stationery! The only things they spent more on were catering, florals, and venue w/ dish & furniture rentals.

She said the stationery (save the dates, invites, escort cards, place cards, menu booklets …) were designed for free by “her team” but the printing cost was $7,000.  When questioned she elaborated with “We did all our stationery letterpressed with holographic foil and advanced die cuts. I own a design firm, so trust me when I say that $7000 for all that was a complete steal.”

Another poster in the thread commented that “We spent about £5000 on our stationery suite and on the day-of paper stuff, and we didn’t spring for letter press - just printing. It is really expensive to have custom stationery. It isn’t worth it for everyone but I am a paper geek and really, really loved having our own special stationery made for us. :blue_heart:”

I’ve never understood what the heck an “escort card” is, and I don’t know what “letterpressed” is either. But holy cow! We talk a lot here about digital invites and “budget” brides ripping of designs to print themselves so I thought it was worth sharing that there is still a market of people out there willing to drop a small fortune on actual professionally printed stationery.  I am thinking that for all you wedding designers getting weird/annoying chat requests and single invite orders - it could be a scammer/cheater trying to save on costs, or it could be someone looking for THE exact thing that they are willing to pay a bundle for. I don’t know. I am just thinking that if wedding stationery is your forte, don’t get too exasperated with possible cheaters; it would just take one of these big-budget paper-loving brides to make up for them. :grin:

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Get me my fainting couch- that is a mind boggling amount of money to spend on stationary. And the wedding overall- wow. Just wow.

I haven’t done any wedding stationary. But I did have my jaw drop when somebody spent almost $700 on graduation cookies I designed. The PTA must have sprung to give a cookie to everyone in the graduating class of some school. Blessed are the big spenders for they justify the amount of time we spend designing something.

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WOW!!! I can’t even comprehend anyone spending that much on a wedding! I’ve seen some really expensive wedding invitations in my internet travels looking for inspiration, like ones that were individually hand-lettered and painted with watercolors, but I had no idea that getting invitations just with foil letterpressing could be that expensive.

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and we worry about our royalty being too high… 

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A long time ago, I heard that weddings cost $27,000, and I thought that was terrible. I thought the couple should use that money to start their life together. Then, I heard about destination weddings, where the wedding party and guests pay to travel to attend the wedding.

If you want to market to these people, blog and pin about unique wedding venues and other ideas.

ETA: Of course, I look at million dollar homes where a couple lives. I can’t imagine the emptiness of space. Now, I stare at the oligarch “yachts” that look like cruise ships.

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20k and more for a wedding is pretty standard here in Italy. For “common” people with an average monthly income of maybe 1.8-2k, not talking about wealthy people. While most is spent on opulent 12,16,20-course wedding dinners and glamour (dress, flowers, decor), sophisticated stationery with embossed and gold foil prints on exclusive paper is a big thing, too. More often than not it’s a race against each other for who has the most costly wedding - and people chit-chat a lot. Applies to funerals, too - the cemeteries are mostly “sad” places with almost no green, unkempt, lots of concrete, but the gravestones… the gravestones… a run who has the biggest, the shiniest, the most costly one. All appearance. Completely different than the quiet, neat, peaceful cemeteries in midst of trees and flowers and plants you encounter in Switzerland, way less glimmer but more thoughtful.

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No doubt there’s premium market for wedding stationery and party supplies; just Zazzle isn’t there. It’s obvious that Zazzle focused on low budget customers, judging by the fact that all paper products offered are pretty simple (flat 5x7 cards; newly launched flat 5x7 foil+color cards where foil only goes on one side; and folded 5x7 foil cards with no color). No laser cut, no folded 5x7 or 4x6 invites with more than one side foil printed, no interesting popular materials like acryl, no engraving. In other words, Zazzle doesn’t offer anything expensive and impressive. Add here the recently launched “On A Budget” category where an invite can be as cheap as $0.4.

So yes, premium market exists just not here.

I for one would love to have more printing options, especially engraving on thick paper and laser cut. But I don’t think we can expect it anytime soon.

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Also no doubt, if Z did invest in equipment to enter this market, the cost would trickle down to us in some way.  However if we offered high end quality then I would have no problem jumping in with high end royalties as well. 

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Zazzle doesn’t have to invest in equipment. They can make an agreement with a business, who prints these specialty wedding items. Then, all of you wedding designers can design them.

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There are a number of very active wedding subs on Reddit which I started following probably two years ago when I was thinking about trying my hand at wedding related designs and thought it would be a good “inside look” into what people want. Wedding designs didn’t turn out to be my thing but I still lurk in those subs, it’s a guilty pleasure I guess, I enjoy looking at the pics and seeing/reading what real-life brides-to-be are wanting/doing. If you’re a wedding designer, you can learn a lot there that might help you. A common question is best place to go to get custom wedding invites, save the dates, etc.  Zazzle isn’t near as well-known as other sites but it does get some mentions and they can be a  real eye-opener sometimes.
For instance, one recent post was asking about how to actually customize the text/designs for rsvps at some of the PODs. They said most they looked at had lines for just number of guests that would attend, but they wanted something that would include the name of the guests attending and their menu choices. They said they knew they could customize things but didn’t know how. From the responses it turns out, to my amazement, that at at least one other popular POD, you have to ACTUALLY PLACE YOUR ORDER and THEN you submit the personalized text you want! That’s crazy. Zazzle easily beats the competition here but for some reason, isn’t as well-known as an option.

Another thing I recently learned from these groups is that square invites require more postage to mail so people recommend avoiding them. If you’re a veteran wedding designer you probably already know that but I had no idea. On a related note, people seem to prefer using envelopes even with postcard style invites/rsvps/etc because it prevents smudging, fingerprints and general damage on them in the mail.

Another thing I’ve seen mentioned more than once (and in an FYI manner, not as a scam/cheat hack) is that if you order a single invite/whatever as a sample from Z, you will get a coupon code for as much as 50% off your next stationary order with that order, so order the one, then wait and if you like it, order the rest using the coupon code.

Another post that sticks in mind was a thread that again, was looking for recs on where to get custom invites. Zazzle was mentioned but one person said that they found a design there they really liked and even though the designer said in their info that they’d be happy to customize the colors, they never responded to any emails or chat messages so they went elsewhere.

Another thing you see a lot in these groups are pictures of bridesmaids/groomsmen proposal boxes that people are really excited about putting together & giving out. If weddings are your business, this is a nice insight into the kind of personalized trinkets people are buying to include in such things.

I’ve even seen posts asking about where to get ties for the groomsmen in specific coordinated colors and or design themes. They can get that at Zazzle!

Anyhows, you get the idea. You can garner a lot of useful info for your design work in these groups and there is even one specifically for lower-budget weddings.

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I just popped over to see who is discussing Zazzle for weddings and you are right. It’s a treasure trove of info. Some recommended Zazzle Black. Yay on that. One person did a breakdown of Zazzle vs. Canva for wedding stationary and Zazzle came out ahead. She said Canva is cheaper but Zazzle has more options which make it worth the higher price. 

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Thanks for sharing these insights with us.  Very interesting even for someone like me who thinks weddings are ho hum.