Not just the card: the envelope, the trip to every family, the spare copies you order because two names were wrong, and the evenings on the phone chasing answers. Put in your guest count and the quotes you already have, and the arithmetic runs on your numbers — including the point where print costs more than a digital invitation.
Run it for your event
The starting values are market ranges, not an offer. Replace them with the quote in your inbox and everything below follows.
How many guests
100 guests
The assumptions — make them yours
Every field says where its number comes from. None of them is a particular supplier's price: they are public ranges, so you have somewhere to start before a quote arrives.
Invitations are addressed to a household, not to a head: 100 guests is around 50 cards. This is the step most comparisons skip, and skipping it doubles the print column for no reason.
Romanian online print shops — the market we can check — list wedding cards from about 1.5 up to around 7 for lace, foil or pocket folds, with handmade pieces well past 20.
The envelope is nearly always priced separately from the card, and so are the ribbon, the wax seal and the insert with the map or the reply card.
A domestic stamp costs more than this on its own and a courier several times more. The starting value is the low end: hand delivery, counted as fuel.
Misspelled names, creased cards, and the people who join the list in the last month. The second order is small, so it costs more per piece than the first.
Writing the names, arranging the handover, the trip there and back, and the call that produces an actual answer. This is the number people underestimate most.
Your result
Editable estimate
€550
Printed, in total
for 55 cards ordered
€49
Digital, paid once
the published price, however many guests
13 hours
Hours of admin
just for delivering invitations and collecting answers
At 100 guests — around 50 invitations — print costs you roughly €550, against €49 paid once here. That leaves €501, plus the 13 hours or so you no longer spend delivering cards and chasing confirmations.
With the prices above, the two lines cross at about 4 invitations — roughly 8 guests. Below that print is cheaper; above it, digital is.
The result is an estimate built from your numbers, not a quote. The only fixed figure in it is our own price; the rest are yours to set.
Method
How the calculation is put together
Four decisions sit behind the figures above. All four are written down, so you can check whether they fit — or change them where they do not.
You pay per household, not per head
A printed invitation is addressed to a family or a couple, so 150 guests is around 75 cards, not 150. Almost every comparison published on this subject multiplies the guest count by the card price and ends up with a print column twice the real size. Here the ratio is a field you edit: if a lot of your guests come alone, set it to 1.5 and the result corrects itself.
The price of a card is not the price of the order
On a quote, the card is one line out of four. The envelope is charged separately almost everywhere, so are the ribbon and the seal, and the insert with the map is another product again. On top of them comes the second order — the misspelled names and the late additions — printed in a small run, which costs more per piece than the first. Ten per cent spare is a modest allowance, not a pessimistic one.
Delivery is the cheap part that turns out expensive
An invitation handed over in person costs nothing on paper: it costs fuel, a weekend, and the other person being at home. Posted, it costs a stamp or a courier — more than the starting value here. The low end is deliberate: if you plan to deliver them all yourself the figure holds, and if half your family lives in another city, raise it and watch what it adds.
Time stays in hours; it is not converted into money
We could multiply the hours by an average wage and print a saving of several thousand. It would be an impressive invented number: nobody pays you for those hours, so you do not lose them as money. You lose them as time, in a month that already has the dress, the venue, the music and the photographer in it — so they stay hours, and what an hour is worth that month is yours to decide.
What the figures leave out
A calculator that included everything would be a calculator proving something. These are the things kept out of the numbers — in both directions.
What changes after the cards are printed
If the ceremony time or the restaurant moves, a printed card cannot be corrected: either you reprint the run or you tell people one by one. Nothing is budgeted for that here, because it does not happen to everyone — but when it does, it adds a whole second order to the print column.
What the digital invitation does besides being an invitation
The digital figure does not buy a link with your names on it and nothing else: it brings the confirmations collecting themselves, the menu choices, the guest list, the seating plan and check-in on the day. Compared honestly, the two columns do not hold the same thing — the right-hand one holds more, and that difference appears nowhere in the arithmetic.
What gets printed anyway
Even with a digital invitation, table numbers, place cards and the seating posters still end up at the restaurant. You get those files ready for print, in the same fonts and palette as the invitation, but the paper and the print shop are still an expense of yours — small next to a full run of invitations, and real all the same.
When print is the right choice
Below the threshold the calculator shows, paper is simply cheaper. And there is a second reason that does not calculate: for the grandparents and the godparents whose invitation is delivered to their door, a card in the hand does something a link does not. Plenty of couples do both — cards for ten families, a link for everyone else — and then the calculator tells you what exactly the printed part costs.
From the public listings of Romanian online invitation shops in August 2026: cards from roughly 1.5 up to around 7 for finished models, with the envelope counted separately. They are ranges rather than any one supplier's price, which is why every field can be changed.
Why are the hours not converted into money?
Because nobody pays you for them, so they are not a saving in currency. A line like "you saved 3,000 in time" looks good and means nothing. Hours stay hours, and what they are worth in the month before a wedding is something only you know.
Does a digital invitation really replace the card?
For most guests, yes: the link opens straight from a chat app, with no download and no account, and the answer comes back the same way. For the few families you want to hand something to, many couples print a small run alongside the link — and the calculator tells you what that small run costs.
What about guests who do not use a phone?
The invitation opens in any browser, so it reaches a child's or a neighbour's phone too, and you can enter their confirmation in the guest list on their behalf. Nobody drops off the list for not owning a smartphone.
Does the calculator work for a christening or a birthday?
Yes. Change the type of event above the calculator and the digital column takes the published price for that event type; the print side is the same arithmetic, with your numbers.
Is the digital price in the calculation the final one?
It is the published price for one event, VAT included where it applies, paid once when you publish. Nothing is added per guest and there is no subscription — which is why the right-hand column is the same at 40 guests and at 400.
Free until you publish
See your invitation before you pay a thing.
Pick the event, open a design with your names in it and pay only when you want it published.