The average Australian couple spends $945 on wedding invitations and another $678 on bomboniere. Two line items, about $1,600 for a hundred guests, and by the Monday after the wedding, most of both is in a bin.
A hundred printed tea towels is $800 delivered, and it is one line item instead of two.
It goes out as the invitation and comes back as the favour, because the thing you posted in March is still hanging on somebody’s oven door in 2036.
Everything below is the practical detail. What fits on one, what they cost against paper plus favours, how to post them, and when to order so they land before your mail-out date.
A wedding invitation also doubles as a favour. You could spend significantly less if it’s one item.
What a Tea Towel Wedding Invitation Actually Is
A full-size tea towel, 70cm by 50cm, weighing 80 to 100 grams, printed with your wedding details and posted to your guest list.
Most couples want to know whether all of it fits before anything else. It does, with room left over. A tea towel gives you roughly four times the printable area of an A5 card, so the whole suite goes on comfortably:
- Your names and the wedding date
- Ceremony venue and start time
- Reception venue and start time
- Dress code
- RSVP by, and who to
- Whatever else you want on there. A photograph, an illustration, a map, a line that means something to the two of you
We design and print them here in Australia on cotton, linen or a 50/50 cotton-linen blend, using water-based inks certified to Oeko-Tex 100.
Get 50 White Cotton Tea Towels printed and delivered from $9.90 each
(Get a Quote Here)
The Two-In-One Budget Case
Compare a tea towel to an invitation, and it looks expensive. Compare it to an invitation plus a favour, which is the job it actually does, and the numbers move.
| Paper invitation + separate favour | Tea towel invitation | |
|---|---|---|
| Invitations, 100 guests | $600 to $1,500 | Included |
| Favours, 100 guests | $500 to $1,000 at $5 to $10 per guest | Included |
| Total, 100 guests | Around $1,600 on average | $800 delivered |
| Per unit | $1 to $6 per card, plus $5 to $10 per favour | From $8.00 each at 100, $7.35 + GST at 150, $8.50 at 50 |
| Foiling, letterpress, embellishments | Extra, often thousands | The print is the price |
| What is left in twelve months | Nothing | A tea towel with your names on it |
Two things worth saying plainly. Stationery is normally 5 to 7 per cent of a wedding budget, so this is not where a wedding is won or lost. And against a plain printed card on raw unit price, paper is cheaper.
We are not claiming tea towels are the cheapest thing you can post. They are the only thing you post that you do not then buy a second item to replace.
Get 100 White Cotton Tea Towels printed and delivered from $8.00 each
(Get A Quote Here)
Why This One Does Not Get Left On the Table
Personalised wedding favours have a bad record, and most printers would rather you did not know it. The 2026 favour research is blunt.
Guests keep what they can use and abandon what they cannot, and name-printed trinkets are specifically the category left behind on the table at the end of the night.
So why is this different?
Because the usefulness sits in the object, not in the printing. A shot glass with your names on it is a shot glass someone already owns six of.
A tea towel is a tea towel. It works in a kitchen whether or not it says Matt and Jane on it, and the names are why it gets kept rather than why it gets used.
That distinction is why this survives the cull that eventually claims the personalised bottle openers and the engraved keyrings.
Guests keep what they can use. The names are why it gets kept, not why it gets used.
Individually Named Towels
You can print a different guest name on every towel. It is the strongest version of this idea, and the one couples remember, because a guest opening a tea towel with their own name on it is receiving a gift rather than a notification.
Two things to know before you commit.
It rules out screen printing. Screen printing works by making a physical screen per colour and running the whole batch through it, which is what makes it cheap at volume and impossible to vary per unit. Named towels have to go through digital printing, where every towel is its own print file.
It also needs a clean guest list. Send the names as a spreadsheet, spelled the way you want them printed, because we print exactly what is in that column. Worth an extra half hour of checking.
If the budget will not stretch that far, there is a middle option that works well. Print the couple’s names and the date across the whole run, and individually name only the wedding party and immediate family.
Our Most Popular Tea Towel Stock
100% Cotton Tea Towels
50% Cotton 50% Linen
100% Linen Tea Towels
Cotton, Blend or Linen
Three fabrics, and at a wedding the choice matters more than it does anywhere else in our catalogue. The fabric is what decides whether the thing reads as formal stationery or as a kitchen item.
Cotton is the cheapest and the usual pick for larger runs. It prints cleanly, washes well, and it is the right answer for a relaxed wedding or a big guest list where the budget is doing a lot of work.
The 50/50 cotton-linen blend gives the best result overall. Best hand feel in the range, and colours come out strongest on it, so this is the one if your design carries a lot of colour or a photograph. For most weddings it is what we recommend.
Linen is the premium option. Heavier, with a visible texture that reads as expensive the moment someone picks it up. It suits formal weddings, and it is what to choose when the invitation is meant to set the tone of the day before anyone has opened a venue website.
Three stacked fabric swatches ordered from lightweight cotton to textured premium linen
Screen Printing or Digital
The design decides this, not the budget.
Screen printing suits one to three flat colours. Monograms, line illustrations, anything type-led with crisp edges and a limited palette.
It gets cheaper the more you order, so it is the economical choice on a large run.
Digital printing handles full colour with no limit. Photographs, watercolour, gradients, hand-painted florals, and anything that varies per towel, including individual names.
No colour count to worry about, and no cheaper-at-volume curve either.
Send the artwork with your quote request, and we will tell you which one suits it. If the design sits awkwardly between the two, we will say so and give you both prices.
Posting Them
A tea towel is not a letter. It goes as a soft pack, so postage costs more per guest than the $2 or so couples budget for a paper invitation. Factor that in before you compare totals, because nobody else will mention it.
Two things help. Couples often hand-deliver locally and post only the interstate and overseas guests, which cuts the bill substantially. And a tea towel is close to indestructible in transit, so there are no rigid mailers, no backing boards, and none of the replacement cards a bent paper invitation needs.
When To Order
Countdown running backwards from the wedding day to the invitation mail-out and the save the date
Work backwards from your mail-out date, not your wedding date.
Wedding invitations traditionally go out six to eight weeks before the day. Save the dates go out around six months ahead. Those are the deadlines that matter, and they arrive earlier than most couples plan for.
Then leave room in front of that for the parts that are not printing: artwork, your approval of the proof, and a sample if you want to hold one before committing. Couples who get a quote in early tend to have a comfortable run at it. The ones who leave it late spend the whole time chasing the schedule.
If you are still six months out, the better move is a save the date tea towel now and invitations later. A save the date on a tea towel does the one thing a save the date is meant to do, which is stay visible in the house until the real invitation turns up.
Nothing Gets Printed Until You Approve It
We prepare the artwork and send it to you for approval before anything goes onto fabric. You get to see exactly what you are buying while it is still changeable.
You also do not need to arrive with a design. Most couples do not. Send a description, a mood board, a photo of the invitation you liked on Pinterest, or a rough sketch on the back of a venue quote, and our designers will build it from that.
And ask for the free sample. It is available on request; conditions apply, and holding the real print on the real fabric before ordering a hundred of them is worth the wait.
Get a Price on Yours
Send your wedding date, guest count and any artwork through the quote form, and ask for a free sample while you are there.
You get a price, a fabric and print-method recommendation, and something you can hold before you commit.
Want to test the idea first? A single personalised tea towel with any full-colour design is under $35 delivered with no minimum, which is how plenty of couples try it before the wedding order goes in.
There is also a bridal shower version, and the full guide to tea towel invitations covers every other occasion we print for.
More Invitation Tea Towels
Need Some Help? Send us your ideas, designs or orders via the quote form.
See a gallery of our completed work
