Today’s guestblog comes from Katie, who’s wedding you’ll be hearing more about later this week. In the meantime, she’s got some telling evidence and advice about your wedding programs…

If you’re hemming and hawing over where to put your wedding money, just remember this picture if you’re considering selling the farm for things like wedding programs…

If you’re opting not to make your own invitations, one piece of advice I have is to get one fancy set for a keepsake (if you ask, some invitation folks will do the proof in the fancy stuff), then do the rest in a more cost-effective manner. For example, get one letterpressed or engraved invitation, and then have the rest thermographed or flat printed. The (approximate) 50% savings are staggering and just as nice.

We designed our programs, had them printed up at the local print shop, then gathered a trusty sweatshop to assemble them. i think the total cost of printing and cutting 100 programs in half was around — $8? i checked out a DIY wedding website for ideas on how to do them, and if i remember correctly, they were charging around $2.50 per program — the package included the two pieces of fancy paper with the program info on them and a wood stick to glue in the middle, but you still had to assemble them yourself.

Moral of the story? Pretty much, no matter how gorgeous the majority of paper goods you cash out on may be, they’re going to end up in the recycle bin.