Choosing from thousands of invitations is not easy, especially when they are just looking for red and white wedding invitations and not a slew of different colors. While most companies have a style of invitation and the color can be chosen to match the couple's theme, it's not always easy to picture how that will look. It can be extremely frustrating. Worse than frustrating if the purchase is being made online because the colors on the screen aren't necessarily the same as what they'll be when they arrive. But weighing the advantages of shopping online to purchasing a set of invitations nearby is what this article intends to do – that, and giving you an idea of what to look for and a bunch of different choices for styles.
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 SET OF 12 PERSONALIZED WEDDING FRAMES FAVORS INVITES THANK YOU FREE SHIPPING US $49.99
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 15mm Red White Check Trim Ribbon Frill 3M Wedding Invitations Craft Scrapbooking US $7.90
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Buying products online is not as hit or miss as it used to be. In the early days of the web there were ridiculously few merchants, even less that shipped everywhere, even less that had a wide variety of merchandise. Today the market is thriving. Merchants from all over the world ship to the USA, the UK, Sweden, Australia – all over the globe. And merchants from those companies ship worldwide as well. Not only are merchants capable of shipping, but most of them have an online presence. What this means for a bride and groom is that they have limitless choices when it comes to getting the perfect red and white invitation. But the absolute biggest perk of shopping online is: the prices. Because of the sheer volume of competition, the ease of finding a merchant (literally at the press of a button) and the incredible search power of Google, Yahoo and Bing, what used to take days or weeks to find can now be done in a matter of hours.
So there are a lot of positives to shopping online: price, time requirement and more readily available styles. But do those outweigh the negatives? That's something for the couple to decide, but there aren't any in my estimation that outweigh those pros.
Shipping charges are essentially the most dominant factor that might drive up costs. But many merchants offer free shipping. And you may be thinking that they drive the price up in order to cover their costs, but in reality they just have a good deal with the shipping companies. When you ship a lot of merchandise, you can afford to offer free shipping to the higher paying orders – a bracket which most invitations, unfortunately, fall into. Not because invitations are so insanely expensive, but when you factor in the costs of the save the date, thank you, envelopes, stickers etc. the cost can usually come anywhere between fifty to five hundred dollars. The great thing about that is the couples choose how much they're willing to pay.
The second factor that makes online shopping less attractive is shipping times. While waiting for invitations to arrive isn't inconvenient, if there's a problem with the order, return shipping can be a hassle. This isn't necessarily true in a lot of cases and the sheer amount of merchants that check and double check orders with the couple helps make returning incorrectly printed or colored invitations less of a possibility. And the bottom line is a lot of merchants won't accept returned cards because they go to such great lengths to have the couple approve before signing off on the printing.
Once a couple decides to make a purchase online, the next step is to decide what style of invitation. When it boils down to red and white invitations for a wedding, it's not as difficult as say red and black wedding invitations – which can limit styles significantly. In fact it's fairly easy. There are, of course, shades of white; ivory, off-white, stark white etc. but the hardest part comes with red, where there are hundreds of variations from pink to burgundy to brick red to maroon. What colors work best for your wedding? If you've already chosen your deciding red, it won't be difficult to find the shade in an invitation color, but if you're using a mixture of reds or haven't decided yet, it might be good to know what shades work best with what styles of weddings.
Depending on the shade of white, of course, red can be used in contemporary, formal, rustic or even casual designs. Ivory and burgundy would be a good choice for a very austere, traditional wedding. Apple red and stark white would be perfect for a contemporary wedding. I've put together a modified table I found on the 'red' wiki and marked r = rustic, c = contemporary, f = formal. The design of the invitation itself will lend to whether it's casual or not, colors don't necessarily mean that. And to that point, colors don't necessarily mean an invitation is rustic or contemporary – it's just a basic guideline to follow and I hope it's helpful.
