Monday, September 16, 2013

Why bother sending printed invitations? &c.


Good Sunday to you ESB,

I really enjoy the vendor-perspective articles (the DJs, the caterers, other sponsored posts) and I'd love to hear the definitive statements made for or against printed invitations and other wedding ephemera. "Do I need printed invites, why the f* do they cost so much?"etc. That would be cool. 

I've looked through the blog, but maybe not hard enough...

*****

I have not taken a stand on this. Though I did once go on a tear about save-the-date postcards.

Here's a little perspective from my friend Joanna, who worked for three years as the custom and production manager at Sugar Paper (and continues to do freelance lettering design for them, even as she embarks on a badass career as a costume designer):*

Why should we bother sending traditional paper invitations?

Let's start by considering the alternative, which is most likely sending an online invitation to your guests. It's pretty tragic for someone to spot your wedding invitation between an emailed ad from Target and a daily Garfield comic strip. We spend most of our time on the computer, working or communicating with our friends and family electronically, so it's important to separate the gesture of inviting a loved one to one of the most important events of your life from, say, TPS reports and cat videos. Also: "I didn't see your invitation because it went to my spam folder"? Lame, yet totally a possibility if you email a digital wedding invitation to everyone.  

You have to remember that receiving a non-junk, non-bill item in the mail is a really lovely thing. When you're planning your wedding it's easy to justify axing paper invitations by saying "everyone is just going to throw our invitation in the trash anyway, so why waste the money?" First of all, no, not everyone is going to just throw your invitation in the trash - sentimental pack rats still exist, and I assure you there are some in your life. Second of all, while it's true that invitations are a limited-use item, so are a lot of things about your wedding, and you're probably not going to poll your guests about whether they think you should spend money on a dress you'll wear once or flowers that will be dead in 2 days. It's not really your problem whether or not your guests will cherish your invitations forever, nor is that the point of sending them out in the first place.

The bottom line: you are asking your friends and family to join you on an incredibly important day, and since they love you they will put in time and money to be there with you. Sending each of your loved ones a physical invitation for your wedding is a special gesture, especially when you consider the returned gesture of traveling thousands of miles to see you get married. Or, look at it this way: you're throwing a big party where you and your partner are the theme and a bunch of awesome people (who also think you're awesome) are joining you to celebrate. For once in your life let your communication wear an amazing outfit too, alright?


So…why is it that wedding invitations are so %$#*ing expensive?

It just depends on what you want. You can order invitations online for $1 or less, though you can expect the print and paper quality (as well as design limitations) to reflect that price. Options for invitations range from plain old digital printing to thermography to traditional letterpress with the price range to match. It may sound ridiculous to spend $15 per invitation, but once you consider what goes into your wedding paper it starts to make a lot of sense:

1. Whether you work with an invitation company or a single artisan, a lot of time is put into your invitations doing skilled work. From my experience working at an established letterpress studio, I can tell you that a handful of very talented people who are really good at specific parts of the process spend way more time than you would imagine producing your invitations. To you it seems like you simply send someone an email with wording, see a customized proof, and a few weeks later you've got your goods. In reality, there was typesetting, editing, plate-making, cutting, hand-feeding, measuring, inspecting, trimming, counting, lining, and packaging - and that's for each piece of the invitation suite.

2. There are super high quality materials available and good invitation companies use them on a regular basis. The options are limitless when it comes to paper - 100% cotton archival quality museum board, sheets with soft deckled edges made in Italy, even paper containing wool fibers for deep letterpress impressions - and the most luxurious kinds have much higher costs because of the craftsmanship and care that go into producing them.  

3.  Added details and assembly take time and skill. One of my first big projects at Sugar Paper was completing production on a 300-invitation wedding order that required carefully measured and stitched satin ribbon sleeves with an additional thick silk bow tied around the entire package. The assembly took me a week to complete, but taking the time to do precise and clean work meant the client received a beautiful product that I was very proud to have worked on. That is what you pay for when you hire someone to take care of the details for you - sharp eyes, careful fingers, and the treatment of your invitations as their own.  


Do what you will, but just remember that your wedding is one of the best excuses you'll ever have to create fancy and custom paper goods for yourself.  

Also: I hear the U.S. Postal Service could use the work.


Lettering by Joanna Reynolds
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*This is NOT a sponsored post. It's just Joanna being rad.

42 comments:

  1. " It may sound ridiculous to spend $15 per invitation, but once you consider what goes into your wedding paper it starts to make a lot of sense..."

    Ummm.....No. No, $15/invite will NEVER make sense to anyone. Because that is the dumbest waste of money I've ever heard of. Of course this professional invite maker thinks its imperative you use invites. The rest of the world disagrees. If you seriously have people who supposedly love you, who would judge you in any way for emailing, calling, sending postcards, or having cheapo invites, then they don't love you. It's not about the invite, its about the day.

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    1. Ummm.....No. No, $15/invite will NEVER make sense to anyone. Because that is the dumbest waste of money I've ever heard of.

      she's saying the cost makes sense given the materials/labor, not that the expenditure makes sense. the logic of the expenditure is specific to the spenders.

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    2. I'd debate whether her explanation for why the cost makes sense, even in regards to materials and labor, is valid. One can place all kinds of worth on their time and energy, but it doesn't make it so. Are we seriously saying on any level a $15 invitation makes sense? Really?

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    3. i'm a designer who also letterpresses invitations as a side venture. 15$ an invitation is not a necessary expense, but unfortunately it IS a fair price depending on what the customer wants.

      for example, i pressed my own invitations (ie. no charge for design time OR labor) and my cost was about 8-10$ per invite. i've received multiple requests to duplicate this design for customers, but ultimately they do not want to pay the 15-20$ per invite i would have to charge to recreate these at a profit.

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    4. is an hour + going into the making of each individual invitation? I can't imagine how much money I'd have to be spending total on a wedding to make $15/invitation seem like an ok number. Maybe if it was a 20 person intimate wedding but that seems crazy.

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    5. the question of whether ANYthing makes cost-sense in wedding/special occasion planning is silly. Do you value a designer dress by considering how many hours went into producing it? Likewise, what you are paying for with a $15 invite is (ideally) impeccable design sense along with fancy materials and labor-intensive processes. No, it does not make sense TO YOU. It did not make sense TO ME either. But it does make sense for some people, just like having a designer dress or a top photographer does.

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    6. A $15/invitation suite may not make any sense for you but don't go paper shaming those for whom it does!

      If your budget allows, or you're rich or you just really want the fing expensive paper, then do it.

      We didn't see the point in spending $1000s on a wedding cake or a limo or a dj but other people want that and have no problem dropping the $ on those priorities.

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  2. I would have loved to spend $15/each on beautiful invitations, but since we're paying for the wedding ourselves, and it's more important to us to have great good and drink fancy invites were cut.

    I ended up using a free online template, printing via viastaprint for cheap, buying slightly fancier envelopers on clearance at paper source, lining them myself with cool paper, and using vintage postcards as RSVP cards. Obviously, DIYing isn't for everyone, but neither are crazy expensive invites.

    I think if you can afford and want to spend the cash on amazing invites, do it, but don't do it because you think you have to, or sacrifice things that are important to you because you're being told it's " one of the best excuses you'll ever have to create fancy and custom paper goods for yourself." Custom and fancy isn't for everyone...

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  3. We used minted.com for our invitations, and they were totally affordable and offered a wide variety for us to choose from. The quality was nice as well (obviously not letterpress quality, but attractive nonetheless). I know some folks on this blog may turn their noses up at Minted, but we got a lot of compliments on our invites and don't regret a damn thing.

    As for save-the-dates, we sent them by e-mail, and there WAS a glitch: A few of our closest friends didn't receive it (later found in their spam folders), which wasn't a huge deal since they knew the wedding date anyway, but if you're sending a save-the-date to more than 30 people, e-mail is probably not the way to go.

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    1. I think Minted has good designs and is of nice quality. Also, I think they do letterpress now.

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  4. Everyone loves getting real mail, whether it's a crazy fancy invite, something from a cheaper place online, or something you make and print yourselves. We had fun designing fairly simple cards with all the information on it tucked in to cheapish envelopes I lined (and definitely didn't need to line, that was a huge pain). We also skipped the RSVP cards, and had RSVPing options on the website and by phone, and had no problems with it. You could also mess around with buying some pretty plain cards and setting up a printer to print out your invite.

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  5. In a world of internet connection I totally understand why invite seem ridiculous. I'm a graphic designer. I think custom made invitation are amazing. But I'm also a nerd whom love to see those things.

    While she describes the value of the work, it's hard not to read the bias in this blurb. She so easily says how lame it is to find the email invitation between ads and spam but when its by postage, the invite between junk mail becomes a "really lovely thing". I know plenty of people whom think all paper form of mail is junk and wasteful. Again, not my opinion, i love receiving little treasure by snail-mail. Plus all the eco brides and groom out there know that email invites are much greener then all the recycled paper in the world.

    This is a sell-speech about why her job is important and while I agree that it is, I hate the tone that seem to both implore and snob at the same time. Yeah for some couple this is a total waste of cash. For others its something precious. There's a place for both, I believe.

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  6. Man, the anons are grumpy this morning.. I actually thought this was the least biased, most reasonable vendor article yet.

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  7. I agree that invitations set a tone, and when you are asking people to come spend money to be there for your event, sending an appealing invitation just feels nice to the invitee. Earlier this year we received an awfully self printed postcard invite to my husband's dad's wedding (his fourth to be exact). It made it seem they were unaware of the thousands of dollars we were about to spend to be there, if that makes any sense. It also let me know that the reception would likely be stocked with Costco trays of food and plastic champagne glasses, which it was.
    That being said, it seems like the only people who would find spending $15 per invite, would also feel compelled to spend money on the other ridiculous wedding industry crap that nobody "needs". I'd rather put that money towards the food and alcohol.
    We designed and printed our own, they came out awesome, and cost about 10 bucks. I can't imagine the crazy wedding-ness that would have to happen where I would pay someone to stitch ribbons on paper.
    The reality is, everybody but you and your mom are going to throw that shit out.

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  8. Everyone has different priorities. After food and booze, all I cared about was the photographer and the invite suite. We splurged and hired an amazing graphic designer who came up with the perfect concept for the invites and carried it through to menus, escort cards, table numbers, bar/photo booth signs, etc. Well worth every fucking cent. Our wedding looked amazing and an incredible, local artist was able to do her job (instead of being cheated by Vistaprint aka the Wal-Mart of invitation art). If you don't care about invites, get cheap ones. If you do, listen to the expert. Great vendor article. I have zero regrets about paying for paper invites.

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  9. As a bride who is in the midst of planning her wedding, I appreciate the vendor's POV on paper (since I haven't yet decided what to do about it). Very helpful and informative, thanks!

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  10. I confess that I fell head over heals in love with wedding paper. Working with designers all across the country and making choices was the most enjoyable part of the wedding process. The day I received a sample letterpress invitation I could not stop stroking the paper, I was hooked. In fact I think I'm going to grab one now and get a quick fix.

    Okay I'm back.

    There are so many wonderful designers out there doing such creative work. That said, I was unprepared for the costs after the invitation - envelope addressing, postage, menu cards, etc. The programs were just a complete waste of money. I hated the constant message from this industry that every spec of paper was a reflection on you and your wedding. You also have to be very organized and coordinate production deadlines which was stressful.

    If you have friends with skillz, and take the time to check out local resources you can put together beautiful things on a budget.

    When we visit friends it is not uncommon for someone to show us our invitation and describe their reaction when they received it. One of my husband's friends spread everything from our wedding out on kitchen table, including the envelopes, and it kind of took my breathe away.

    But I sure could use that money now.

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  11. We recently went to a (rad) family wedding and my cousin sent out email invites. In theory I love this idea, and it totally "set the tone" in that the theme of this event was LAID BACK. The trouble was: people still expect paper invites. So there was a lot of confusion, where people thought they hadn't been invited, didn't know the details, etc. all because it was online.

    Maybe your family is smarter than mine (it's possible!), but I think if you're going the online route try to get the word out there so people know not to delete your invitation.

    Also: support a independent business! Our invites were through etsy and they were only marginally more than a diy at Michael's. They weren't the most stunning piece of paper in the world, but a) I didn't have to diy anything and b) we gave money to a sweet woman living in Seattle and running her own business rather than some giant, soulless corporation.

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  12. While I am all for supporting local/small businesses, this was one expense we could not afford. If you have decent handwriting at all, you can go DIY if you are strapped for cash: just get some really beautiful heavy paper cut at a printing/paper store, get some watercolor paints for splattering and a nice ink pen with a chisel tip. Can look surprisingly great.

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  13. I was lucky to have a friend (of my husband) letterpress ours as a gift. At the time I thought that if I didn't have her, I would have gone a simple route, probably minted.com or postcards (sorry ESB). But a lot of people told us how much they loved the beautiful, awesomely wood-type printed invitations (and thank you notes), now I appreciate the gift even more. If I had had to pay $10 each... well, I might have tried.

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  14. First, to everyone discussing the $15/invite thing:

    Yes, this is a lot of money from a consumer point of view. But for those of you questioning the reality of nice invitations possibly costing that much (in terms of materials and labor), then you are obviously not in the design and production industry. I recently made invites for a friend. It was DIY: I designed it, we had it printed from an online service, I produced a lot of the smaller pieces and she and I put it all together. I don't have a final final cost because the bride paid for a lot of the materials and the postage, but they were pricy. Printing, alone, was $2/invite. I bet they were something like $6-8/invite. Not including design and production labor costs.

    As with any of these "is this worth the cost?" wedding questions, it's a matter of your own priorities. You might love flowers and feel they are a MUST or you might think they are a waste of money. The same is true for invitations. You should spend to reflect your values and interests.

    I love paper and design and personally feel that invitations set a mood and expectation for what your event will be like. I think it makes a guest feel special and included. But, again, I LOVE this stuff.

    I think the biggest problem with a "digital" invitation is that there are no good solutions out there. If you do something SUPER custom (like this), then, cool. But emails or Evites (or GOD Paperless Post - UGH) are just not great alternatives to a printed invite. I think better to go very simple and do it on paper than have some bad digital version.

    Also, I might be either a worrier or pessimist, but I fear that a digital invite of any sorts is open to abuse, manipulation or interpretation when it comes to which guests are invited. Like, if you choose not to invite someone but other people assume they are, they might just be like, "oh, you didn't get the invite? Here..." and forward it to them. And it's harder to address them to specific people (I think, anyway).

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    1. Yes, yes. All of this.

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    2. Anyone who has access to the internet also knows you can get fine paper products at extremely inexpensive prices. In fact I'd argue that if you're claiming to be in the "production and design industry" you're probably accustomed to over spending on fancy paper, or printing at the most expensive printers, just as a classic artist would perhaps demand to use only the best oil paint.

      Those of us who know that only the rare person can even tell the difference in quality of paper, printing, etc., know its completely unnecessary to spend the kind of money you're discussing. So if understanding how to do things in an inexpensive way means one "obviously isn't in the...industry" then count me in that group. Frankly I'd take my design, thrift shopping and productions skills over any "professional" who wants to charge $15/invite.

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  15. In case anyone is worried about etiquette, I'm going to weigh in as a 56-year old from a very WASPy (albeit left-wing) family who recently got married.

    Sent only two printed invites. One to a colleague at work, and one to my mother whose memory and technical is insufficient for something that can be seen only on a computer. Not a single family member objected.

    OTH, the paper invites are infinitely more beautiful in the hand than anything on the screen. I'm keeping them:).

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  16. How awesome is a blog fight about letterpress? God I love this site.

    People seem to think that they either have to go really cheap (minted, diy) or super expensive ($10/set letterpress). There is actually an in between option - you can avoid doing a whole invitation "suite" but still do a nice letterpress invite. After about 1600 hours of online research, I settled on an invite from elfletterpress on Etsy, with a small insert card indicating where people could rsvp online. The two letterpress pieces (which were gorgeous) were 5.50 a set. Not cheap, but not 100X more than minted, either.

    http://www.etsy.com/shop/elfletterpress?ref=search_shop_redirect

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    1. We went with Wedding Paper Divas, which was another "in-between option" - and were really happy with them.

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    2. We went with Love vs Design... which was also really great...the paper was TO DIE FOR...although I had one friend (also a bride) who was so in "awe" of our invites and proclaimed that we must've gone to Vistaprint because they were so good... Thank god it was an email conversation, I nearly spat my coffee out when I saw that note come in.

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  17. I don't get what's so wrong about postcards. We are total postcard nerds (we sent almost 60 from our 3 week honeymoon!) and it seemed only right to send out postcard save the dates. We wrote every one of them by hand with personal messages. Something like70 I think. Everyone was touched and a lot of people didn't even expect a proper invitation to follow because the postcards were so special!

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  18. I spent more than $15/invite for a small batch of letterpress invites (2-piece set, 30 sets) and I never regretted it once. Once I got the letterpress samples compared to the digital-print samples, there was just no comparison. But it was my obsession + my money - a pretty easy decision!

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    1. Amen. I don't think I'm batshit crazy insane, and I know I'm not rich, but I really, really love paper & lovely stationery, & so I spent close to $15/invite for my wedding (including postage, calligraphy, letterpress invitation sets). I know it's obviously not for everyone, but I figured when else will I ever get to send out awesome invitations like this? My obsession + paid for it myself. Don't regret it all.

      But I absolutely agree with the above commenter that there's tons of options in between DIY & $20+ invites these days.

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  19. This is great timing-- we've been using a wedding website, more to be able to update information as it's a destination wedding, and still some time later there are a mysterious ten or so people that have yet to open our messages. We even tried emailing from our personal accounts so they knew to expect the online stuff. Point being- we are looking into paper invites for nostalgia's sake, and so people all get the message.

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    1. also if people are having trouble doing that, then think about the trouble RSVPing... I can't even count any more the number of times I heard "I tried to find your website but it's not on the Internet." *facepalm* followed by me explaining that you type the web address on the paper invite in the bar where it says www.webaddressofpageyourecurrentlyon.com

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  20. This actually just made me want to become a letterpress person. I could live with handling fancy paper all day.

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  21. We went with custom invites from Etsy for about $2.50 per invite. They weren't letterpress, but they were nice. There are tons of options out there in between DIY and high-end custom letterpress.

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  22. This has been thoroughly entertaining and informative for me, as a graphic designer who designs invitations day in and day out at a printshop.

    From my POV, it's my job to work with your budget, whatever it may be. My clients tend to spend between 5-10 percent of their total wedding budget on stationery, but there are no rules.

    Despite the stationery world's fervent claims of importance, I find it sad and telling that the author of the vendor article no longer does full-time stationery work. We're actually a dying breed, and I'm wondering if I should just give it up and start learning web design already. But alas, I am a paper junkie, always and forever.

    Also, I think programs are bullshit, only something to stress over at the last minute. But that is just me. Keep mailing invites until email feels quaint and out-of-date.

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    1. Oh, man. I think programs are really great. 90% of weddings are dull or traditional or weird or something. As a guest I think it's super helpful to know what to expect and to follow along. I check programs, like, 5 times during a ceremony.

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    2. But I liked the element of total "WTF is happening" in my wedding. All of us standing up just chatted and joked, wondering when the music would stop, knowing that everyone in the audience was wholly confused.

      One can create mystery in many ways.

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  23. I used to work for a fancy letterpress company in West Hollywood, and designed and managed invitation suites that cost as much as my entire wedding (10k). Not to mention Bar Mitzvah, birthday, or dinner party invites that made me weep. But it's true, paper products are beautiful objects, and they matter to some people. When done with care and creativity, an invitation is like an appetizer for a party, a little paper foreplay.

    When it came time for my wedding, I had since left the stationery business, but I knew I wanted something special. I designed them myself and had a friend letterpress them, and it still came to $10/each (2 colors, 3 piece suite). Damn, they were gorgeous though, and I have friends who refuse to take them off their fridge, even three years later. THAT is a place of honor!

    We splurged on paper (as well as food and photog), but didn't have a bar, my dress was used, and my husband's friend was the dj.

    Make your own choices as you see fit!

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  24. They can still add that touch and feelness that just makes it feel special! There is just something about getting some mail. We were able to use some handy postage machines to really make it an efficient process

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