To invite or e-vite?

Hi Alexis! I definitely agree with Val that hard copy invites are the way to go. That way guests can bring them with them to have all the details handy and not have to drain their phone batteries checking their email. (They'll need their battery to take pics all night at your wedding!) Also, if you have older guests, they tend to prefer hard copies. It's also a great momento for you and you can have your photographer get some beautiful shots of your invitations on the day of your wedding!

Invitations should definitely not cost a THOUSAND dollars. (If someone quoted you that, do not use them!) We got our invitations off of Etsy for $250 (US) and they were great! The vendor even assembled them for us. We got our Save the Dates off of Minted for $175 (US) so there are definitely cost effective ways to do it! (And you don't have to do Save the Dates. We did because ours was a destination wedding and almost all of our guests weren't local.) Michaels has kits you can print yourself. You can also check out websites like Shutterfly, Snapfish, Wedding Paper Divas and Vistaprint. They all do sales and if you sign up for their emails, you can plan for it. (And some of them offer free wedding websites to match your invitations.)

And just make sure when you buy postage that you get stamps to mail the invites and pre-stamp the return envelopes for your guests. Most wedding websites allow you the option to have your guests RSVP online so you could have your guests do that if you don't want them to have to mail back a RSVP.

I'm doing email invites so I don't think tank overly tacky. I've seen two other couples do the same . My rationale is that it saves money and trees.

You can use their templates (they have sine very nice options) or upload your own design, completely up to you! It will be cheaper to use theirs though (because unless you design your own, you'll have to pay for the template and then printing). And Vistaprint is 50% right now, but don't feel rushed, they have sales OFTEN and good ones at least twice a yearI have photos at home if my invites, but I so make all my own cards so I've got a solid amount of supplies already haha

Ugh see I do too! $50?! That's not bad at all!!! I'm not really privvy to the whole VistaPrint thing- I'm looking at the website and I see that there are templates on there, and then different paper options. So I can submit whatever I purchase on Etsy or use on of their templates, submit that online to vistaprint and they'll print them and mail them to you or...?

Oh to answer your other question, no you don't HAVE to send a save the date email if you send the invites in email. Same rule for digital as print IMO, if guests have to travel very far (book flights), it is courtesy to have have the dates, otherwise it's just up to you of you want to.

Personally I MUCH prefer physical invites, a wedding is a formal event and and e-vite feels wrong. There are plenty of low cost options available. You can get inexpensive templates on Etsy and print at home. Vista print currently has a sale. Or you can make your own! I think even a simple invite is better than an email. Also keep in mind that you only need to buy enough invites for households (rather than per person, may sound obvious but I totally kept thinking about my head count and bought supplies for 100 rather than the 50 I actually needed!).
I made my own and it wasn't too time consuming and cost me about $50 including the ink I bought