Budget idea: Paperless invites for pennies

{One of the design concepts by LED}

I mailed a batch of save-the-dates to out-of-town guests, relatives and our attendants last week. The locals will get theirs later this month. One big task out of the way!

Lollipop Event and Design recently posted a comprehensive start-to-finish narrative, including all the design comps of our STD design in From Inspiration to Creation here.

Our "rockin" STD's also got featured on The Wedding Chicks and Rock n' Roll Bride. Wow.

I wish we had the budget to hire Lollipop to design our invitations, but we can't afford to.  So I have been looking at inexpensive alternatives.

Paperless Post is a beta site I came across that offers users to:

• Design custom online invitations and announcements
• Deliver personalized envelopes to your guests' inboxes
• Monitor as guests receive your invitations, and track their replies 
• Manage invitations you have received 

The way it works is that upon sign up, you get 25 free virtual stamps. Since we have about 130 guests to invite, we'd only need to pay $10.00 to email 150 guests. Pricing can be found here. They seem to have credible fans: The New York Times, W Magazine, Lucky Magazine, to name a few. Can't wait to try it out (in fact, just signed up for an account).

Another alternative we've considered is printing our invites on postcards with instructions directing our guests to RSVP on our website. Over the weekend, I won 100 custom postcards on bride blogger @QueButtons' (aka Katie Olsen) terrific blog, Random Thoughts of a Perfectionist! She had partnered with UPrinting.comhttp://www.uprinting.com/, an online print and brochure design service that lets users easily create or upload designs for fast printing at an affordable price. Visit Katie's website for more adventures in planning a wedding!

Would you consider going budget and green for your invitations?

{Photo from Lucky Magazine online}