Cutting Costs on Wedding Postage
By Melissa Watters

Have you realized how quickly the postage for your wedding invitations and responses can add up? Let's say you are sending out 100 invitations. In each of these invitations you are sending the invite, a reception card, a response card, and a map. Most likely, you have gone over the USPS weight limit for a regular stamp. You are probably going to pay at least $0.55 per invite - that's $55.00!

Now, each of the responses requires a stamp as well. And, unfortunately for us all, stamp prices are going up again in June of 2002 to $0.37 per stamp. This means, you will have to spend an additional $37.00 to put stamps on the response cards. In total, your costs are now up to at least $92.00 - just on postage.

If you are sending out 200 invitations, your cost will double to $184.00. If your invitations are particularly heavy and you need more postage, it could get even worse. (Take it from me, I spent around $280 on 250 invitations - and that was before the price increase!)

Want a simple, cost cutting method to save money on postage? Why not have your guests RSVP right online from their home or work computer?

This is becoming an increasingly popular method of responding to wedding invitations. And, it has the added bonus of being more convenient for your guests. For whatever reason, even though most couples conveniently place a stamp on the response card, there are always lots of people who wait until the last moment to put their reply in the mail, causing you the unneeded stress and worry of wonderment.

When you use purchase an online rsvp wedding website, not only do your guests get the convenience of replying online, but you will receive an e-mail almost instantaneously with each of their replies. This e-mail includes the guest's name, additional names of those attending, number attending the ceremony, number attending the reception, their meal choices, and a message from the guest. Plus, each e-mail will give you a total of the number of responses you have received, the number of people who will be attending each of your events, and the number of people requesting each of your meal choices.

Need help wording your response card to reflect your Online RSVP?
Try the following:

"A favor of a reply is requested before June 15, 2002 at http://www.yourname.com"

"Please respond on or before June 15, 2002 at http://www.yourname.com"

"We look forward to seeing you! Kindly respond on or before June 15, 2002 at http://www.yourname.com"

"The favour of your reply is requested via our online RSVP before June 15, 2002, located for your convenience at: http://www.yourname.com/ password: truelove."

Consider this modern way to cut cost on postage - I think you will discover that the benefits to having a wedding website are endless!

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