Step 1: Test Pieces
Do not get stuck with elegant, but incompatible pieces. Test all your pieces before you buy any. After addressing 200 envelopes you do not want to suddenly realize that nothing will fit inside of them. So, prior to ordering your invitations, before you even buy a single piece of the package, make sure every piece works together.
The response card needs to fit in the response envelope. The response envelope, the invitation, the invitation tissue, and any other included item (i.e. map) must fit inside the inner invitation envelope. Finally, be sure that the inner invitation envelope fits inside the outer invitation envelope. Then, and only then, purchase all your materials.
In fact, take it one step further and take an invitation out for a test drive. Mail a completed invitation to yourself so you can get the full experience of receiving your wedding invitation. This test will give you an opportunity to see problems that you might not otherwise think of occurring--an envelope so thin its contents shows through, the inability to easily extract certain items, the ink bleeding, and lots of other issues. What you want to do is find and prevent any errors that your recipients might encounter.
Finally, check your pieces immediately upon receipt from the printer. Make sure the colors are correct, the paper stock is what you ordered, the invitations are not misspelled and every detail about them meets your approval. Do not wait until you start to assemble and mail them, check the pieces for errors immediately. The sooner you spot one, the sooner it will be corrected.
Step 1½: Acquire Postage
Don't overlook the obvious. Just because you have all the pieces of the invitation, doesn't mean you have everything you need to send them out. Making time for stamp selection prior to mailing them will give you an opportunity to select the postage you want.
A new and interesting idea is www.photo.stamps.com which allows you to customize postage with an image you select. You can even include your engagement photo right on the stamp itself and have that stamp's value be exactly what you need it to be. Of course these take time to produce and you should visit that site for more information.
To be safe, take your sample invitation and get it weighed to see exactly how much in postage you will need. You do not want every single invitation returned because you were short a couple of cents on postage. Hopefully, your invitations will qualify for standard 1st class service. This means that you will only need one stamp and will have a wide variety of standard stamps from which to choose.
Don't overlook the less obvious either. If including a postage paid return envelope for response cards, you will need postage for those as well. You do not want to assemble your invitations only to have to pry them all open to affix a stamp to the response envelope.
Be organized and be prepared.
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