Wedding stationery experts Hello! Lucky just added a new option to their list of pretty stationery options. Up until now, they specialized in lovely letterpress printing, which I cannot deny absolutely rocks my socks. I love letterpress wedding stationery and am glad that it made a big comeback a few years ago. That said, not everyone can afford it. Heck, not everyone likes it!
And there are so many other printing options out there, from engraving (which uses a copper plate negative to create raised inked impressions in paper) to thermography (which mimics engraving using heat-treated colored resins to create raised lettering) to foil stamping (which also uses a copper plate negative except with foils instead of inks) to offset lithography (which uses a rubber cylinder or plate to transfer ink to paper).
So what is Hello! Lucky’s new option? Surprisingly, it’s digital printing, which is cheaper even than lithography because it utilizes high resolution digital printers to produce wedding invitations and thank you cards instead of more expensive printing equipment. All of the shop’s digital designs are printed on high-end museum quality cotton paper so your wedding invitations are going to look good, if not quite as good as letterpress invitations.
When it came to my own wedding invitations, I went with thermography, but that was because it was the only option offered with the paper I liked. Were I to go back and do it all again, I’d probably do DIY wedding invitations and print them myself. I’m curious to know what you chose or are thinking of choosing so I put together a little poll.
After you choose your answer, let us know why you chose (or are choosing) the wedding stationery you did (or will) in the comments.
Well, I already posted about this, but I did a combination of letterpress invitations and digital print RSVP cards via Etsy. My logic was that the guests will send the RSVP cards back, but they’ll keep the invitation, so that’s what I wanted to put our money into!
I honestly don’t know what the printing process was for our invitations. They were pretty, they were wildly inexpensive, and they got done correctly and in plenty of time. That was pretty much what I considered when ordering them. All I really cared about was that they fit my extremely tight budget and had a pretty red floral border that reminded me of the simpler end of William Morris’ Arts and Crafts style designs. I’m guessing it was lithography, because that was the probably cheapest thing available at the time, and these were definitely budget-friendly.
If I paid attention and was getting married now, I would probably opt for the digital printing…unless the invitation I really had my heart set on was only available in lithography. As long as the invitations look nice and get the feel of the event across, I’m willing to cut a corner or two there for the sake of having bucks to spend somewhere else. My personal priorities run far more to things like food and entertainment.
We did the DIY thing, because we had several different versions that were going out- invitations to all (ceremony, home reception, and evening cocktail reception), cocktails only, or announcement only. And variations of each had to go out in two different languages.
There was NO WAY I could have been able to afford or explain all of that. Besides, it was a lot of fun to decide on fonts, wording, color, etc on my own.
We found a fabulous printer online (http://www.mkprinter.com) who did gorgeous custom letterpress invitations, reply cards and thank-you notes for us. I tried looking around town for thank you cards that I liked, but ended up going back to our printer because he was so efficient and talented and the best part–very affordable! We’ve gotten a ton of compliments on the invites–my favorite one was “elegant without being pretentious.” Awesome.
I am ordering my letterpress invites next week from here: http://twinravenspress.blogspot.com. Letterpress make me swoon, and I’ve wanted them all along and thought they were completely outside my budget. I found an affordable option for me, coming in at only about $150 more than digital printed invites from weddingpaperdivas.com. Oh, and Kristin, the owner/creator of TwinRavens is really great to work with!
@ Melissa B- that’s a great idea to letterpress the invite only, and print the reply card.. The invite is the keepsake part, right?
Ps. Love the blog!
Mine were digitally printed by White Aisle. I had a small wedding, and to be honest our families are not the type who would notice if an invitation was engraved or not. I loved my invites. I found a great art nouveau illustration, Rebecca from White Aisle did a great design for the invite and came up with a reply card that looked like an art nouveau postcard, and I put the whole thing together in a lovely pocketfold and tied it with two ribbons. I recommend White Aisle highly–they have letterpress and some lovely shimmer options now. Wow, I wish they had all that back when I was getting married! Maybe I should get the baby christened… 😉
Digital Printing, because 1. I did them myself, and 2. I printed the information on vellum. I took the vellum and attached it to a piece of colored cardstock that was slightly larger, and joined the two together with two matching scrapbooking grommets. They weren’t fancy, but they were simple and elegant, and I liked that I made them myself, even though I made over 100 invitations.
I need to take a better photo of the invitation I have laying around somewhere, but here’s a semi-decent photo for now. (I just wish it was larger.)
http://flickr.com/photos/tonibduguid/317901363