I don’t have a lot of regrets about my wedding. But if I had to rank the few that I do have, making my own wedding invitations would sit firmly at slot number one. I don’t even remember what compelled me to make my own wedding invitations. Maybe it was that the invitation designs at the time felt so stuffy and old fashioned. Or that I’d convinced myself it would be cheaper to DIY (it wasn’t.) What I do know is that twenty hours of hand printing my invites in my poorly ventilated basement apartment was a bad idea. Bad.
So I’m not exaggerating when I say that I marvel at how great wedding invitations are these days (design, affordability and convenience?! Whodathunk.) In fact, if you’d asked me a year or two ago, I’d have told you there was little room for improvement. But when our longtime partner and fave wedding planning tool Zola announced they were launching their own line of affordable and stylish wedding stationery suites (including save-the-dates, invitations, menus, programs and more), I ate my words. Because in addition to being really gorgeous, Zola’s wedding stationery can actually save you time and energy in your wedding planning process. Plus right now Zola is offering 30% off all their wedding stationery, which means they can also save you money.
Octavia Portrait Stationery Suite
A Puzzle With Too Many Pieces
Have you ever created a wedding website in one platform, uploaded a guest list spreadsheet in another, tracked RSVPs and wedding gifts in another, and then when the wedding is over, tried to combine all that data to send out thank you cards? Because I have. And it’s part of the reason those thank you cards never went out. 🙈
With Zola, all of that is handled in the same place. So let’s do a real world scenario here. When I got married, we used six or seven different platforms for creating our guest list, printing out save-the-date cards, collecting RSVPs, managing our registry, and tracking who bought us gifts. We spent close to $500 on invitations between DIY supplies and paper. And that gift tracker? Was definitely just a gift bag filled with cards that I’m pretty sure is still in a spot on my closet shelf somewhere collecting guilt.
But with Zola, every single one of those tasks could have been replaced with their all-in-one platform. Here’s what it could have looked like instead:
- Planning Tools: After getting engaged, we would have signed up for a free Zola account or downloaded the app to take advantage of their planning tools.
- Guest List Fairy Godmother: With Zola you can create your guest list right inside the app, upload an existing spreadsheet, or send your guests a link to share their info. (Rather than hunting them down by way of the Yellow Pages, like I did.)
- Stylish Save-The-Dates: Instead of spending hours custom designing our photo save-the-date, we would have used any one of Zola’s beautiful photo-focused save-the-date designs.
- A Registry My Nana Would Use: We definitely would have created our wedding registry with Zola, since all I ever wanted was a user-friendly universal registry that let me control when my gifts were shipped.
- No More DIY Invites: When the time came, we could have customized our wedding invitations using Zola’s online invitation tool. And instead of hand-writing every single envelope, our guests’ names and addresses would have magically appeared on our envelopes for free. Total cost for those Zola invites, by the way? Only $175 for 125 invites with the current 30% off deal.
- One Stop RSVP Shop: Our guests would have had the option to RSVP directly through Zola, collecting attendance details in real-time.
- Day-Of Paper On Lock: If I hadn’t been so burned out by our DIY invites, I probably would have opted for extra paper like menus or programs (and yup, Zola has both.)
- Actually Send Out The Damn Thank You: When the wedding is over, we would have replaced the bag-o-cards with Zola’s gift tracking tool and maybe actually sent out Thank You cards (that we also, yup, would have bought from Zola).
Number of platforms used? One. I mean, if all I do today is save you from creating yet another spreadsheet for your wedding, I’ll go home happy.
Also in Logistics
no More Boring Invites
But before I lose myself in logistics, let’s talk about these designs. Because they are as far from the stuffy boring invites that drove me to DIY disaster all those years ago. Zola’s got modern invites:
Woads Corner Wedding Invitations and Franklin Ring Wedding Invitations
They’ve got whimsy and romance:
Eastwick Vines Wedding Invitations, Sparrow Bloom Wedding Invitations
A little artsy minimalism:
Miles Portrait Wedding Invitations, Rosemont Classic Wedding Invitations
And of course a few traditional designs:
Violin Portrait Wedding Invitations, Griffin Stamp Wedding Invitations
Zola’s wedding invitations are all fully customizable—you can choose your fonts, change colors and even edit the layout of your text so that your invite really feels like you. And then when you’re done, you can get matching (or not) enclosure cards, menus, programs, even thank you cards (and yup, all of those are included in the 30% off deal right now.)
Zola is adding tons of new invitation designs to their site every month, but here are a few of my favorites:
Galata Profile Wedding Invitation
Deepcreek Portrait Wedding Invitation
Lyons Classic Wedding Invitation
Cruise Leaf Wedding Invitation
Gramercy Portrait Wedding Invitation
Larimer Border Wedding Invitation
DC Skyline Wedding Invitation (also available for NYC, Chicago and SF)
Folly Border Wedding Invitation
Sona Portrait Wedding Invitation
Haring Frame Wedding Invitation
Layton Portrait Wedding Invitation
The Elusive Wedding Trifecta
So if you’re looking for invitations that will check off the following (what I consider the holy trifecta in weddings)
- Beautiful
- Affordable
- Time saving
Then head over to Zola now and check out their newest invitation designs. All of Zola’s invites ship for free in 5-10 business days so there is still plenty of time for your fall weddings (if this doesn’t scream sophisticated soiree in October, I don’t know what does.) Because it’s a rare thing when the wedding industry makes your life easier while also giving you a heaping dose of pretty. So take advantage of it where you can.
Click here to Get 30% off your Zola wedding stationery today
This post was sponsored by Zola. Zola doesn’t just have gorgeous affordable wedding invitations. With Zola, you can build the registry you actually want; add items from a selection of over 50,000 gifts (plus add from any store), or if physical objects aren’t your style, register for experiences and subscriptions—heck, with Zola you can even register for Airbnb (give it to me.) And with Zola Weddings, you can manage your wedding checklist and your guest list too. Other perks include group gifting, shipping control (aka you tell your registry when you want to receive stuff), and the lowest credit card processing fee in the industry for cash gifts, if you choose to add a cash registry option. Click here for a full list of Zola’s features and sign up for Zola today!
