Smart Wedding: The Little Things

I'll be the first to admit that when I started thinking about the cost of my wedding all I considered was the big stuff: dress, photographer, venue, caterer. But now as the date gets closer and closer (8 months, 5 days and counting) I'm becoming overly aware of all the sneaky little costs that don't necessarily come to mind.

For example:  postage

I'm embarrassed to tell you how long I mulled over whether or not I should order custom postage. It was at least a week. Before I tell you if I did or not let me give you some facts.

1. Custom postage is amazing, and adorable.
2. Custom postage costs almost twice as much as a plain old regular stamp.

Check it:


$309 on stamps! Luckily, I'm only sending out about 40 of each, which still would have cost me $120 just for postage. That's more than the price of my Save-the-Dates and almost 30% of my total budget for invitations.

So after much debate I decided on a compromise. I ordered pretty fancy postage for my postcard Save-the-Dates (around $35) and will opt for regular old postage on my invitations (+$60) for a total of about $90.

The lesson here? It's not the big things that blow your budget.  They are the costs you are most aware of and prepare for.  Its all the little things that you don't account for that add up.

(i'm having way too much fun with graphics lately, can you tell?)