How To Estimate Ribbon For Invitations

Probably the most frequently asked question that I get is "how much ribbon do I need for my invitations?" so if you've found your way to this page with the same question, good news! Here's everything you need to know to make sure you have enough ribbon for your invites.

The second most frequent question I get is "I underestimated and need more ribbon and the invites are supposed to go out this week - can you HELP?!" so let's make sure you can skip that extra stresser in an already stressful time.

The best and most accurate way - and it's easy! - to figure this out is to take an invite (assuming you have one to hand - if not, cut a piece of card to the same size).

Take some string or yarn and tie it around the card, cutting the ends to the length you'd like your ribbon to be.

Untie the string and measure it.

Round up to the nearest inch (you'll make a few small mistakes when you're wrapping your invites and they add up really fast)

Multiply that number by the number of invitations you'll send out.

Divide that number by 36 to get the number of yards you'll need.

So for instance if you came up with 12 inches per invite and you have 125 invites that would be 1500 (yikes!) divide that by 36 and you have 41.66 yards

Round up again to the next nearest yard.

Ta-da! You now know how many yards of ribbon you need.

Of course this also works if you're in a place where metric units are used (ie, everywhere but the USA). If you also need to convert that number to yards in order to buy enough from a US vendor (like me!). A metre is slightly less than 1.1 yards, so if your numbers are in metres, divide your length by 1.094 and again, round up to the nearest large number.

If you're still pondering how you'd like to tie your ribbon - a bow, a knot.. with a wax seal?.. check out my other post about just that.

And as always, if you find you have questions, feel free to ask!