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I'm just curious whether most people do it themselves by hand, hire a calligrapher or print out labels.
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I found a talented and affordable calligrapher through Etsy, and will be working with her for our invitations!
I just started taking classes this week at our local nunnery. We are going old school with the ink well and all. I am making my sister take the classes with me so addressing 300 invitiations won't take the next 5 months!
I like the traditional touch of doing handwritten calligraphy but unfortunately have splurged way too much on the invites themselves to do professional calligraphy (might save that for a simpler touch like escort cards =P?). So I've busted out my old nibs from a college drawing class and have started practicing a more stylized version of my handwriting for the envelopes. So far it looks okay...we'll see what happens when I actually start practicing on my real invites, which are coming on Monday :D!!
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My FI's dad is very artsy so we are kinda having him learn calligraphy and is doing them. I figured it would be a good way to get the in-laws involved too.
Back in the day I did all the calligraphy on the invitations to my high school prom. It was HELL and I vowed never to do it again. That...and I figured the post office could read the printed font better than inked flourishy handwriting. Also the feel of my invitations was very bold and architectural. Hand writing just would look contrived. Depends on the feel of your event and the design of the invitations.
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I was going to print mine, but it was causing me more of a headache than it was worth so I just wrote it out by hand. People are throwing them away anyway so I didn't want to waste my money.
I figure they're going to throw the outer envelope away anyway (plus it's likely to get dirty or wet or mangled going through the mail), so I'm just handwriting them. I thought about printing them on my computer, but then I realized it would take me way longer to type in all the addresses and figure out the proper formatting settings than it would to just write them.
I have always heard that it is a big no-no to print addresses on wedding invitations. So, I am handwriting them.
I hand-wrote mine.
I think I have pretty good handwriting, and I used a nice pen and took my time so my hand didn't get tired. I think even if I didn't like my handwriting, I would have done it anyway. The best way to make your hand-addressed envelopes look nice is to keep the lines as straight as possible.
We printed our labels out using a "typewriter" font on plain white labels, and then stuck our invitations in manila envelopes, trying to make them look like they came from a library. :)
We plan on using labels, but I hand created the font and generated it for my computer so I will be typing with my own designs! I thought it was a fun way to do labels so (even if the guests don't know it) they're pretty personalized!
I handwrote mine (but with a very flourishy handwriting) - and boy, did I waste more than a few envelopes! If I ever have to do anything formal with so many envelopes again it's labels or regular handwriting for me!
We used clear labels and pretty font. I also put the image from our invites on the label to tie in the theme. It looks a million times better than our hand writing! I asked my parents if they would be offended if their invite was labelled, my dad's response was "it takes a lot more than a label to offend me!". I don't think any of my family will care and if they do, I don't care!
I'm planning on running the envelopes straight through a color laser printer. Not sure if I'll be able to do the return addresses (on the back) the same way, or whether that will cause problems with the printer.
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i'm doing at travel theme and have a small guest list (40) so i printed personalized 'boarding passes' for each guest. so passenger name = guest name.
on the envelopes though, i just wrote them myself - i decided not to fret over whether my handwriting was pretty or not. it is something unique to me, and i think my guests appreciate that :) (or at least that's what i tell myself as i scrawl their names, tee hee!)
We're having them printed, but no labels. We'll get them printed directly when we get the invites printed. We've been tracking down addresses all day today:)
our invites have the return addresses letterpressed on the envelopes, and there is a pretty bird letterpressed on the front holding a little "TO." hard to picture, i know. i tried to hand write the envelopes, but b/c the bird and such was all in green, and the envelope was so thick, i hated the way my writing looked. i ended up matching the color and font on my computer and printed out my addresses directly on the envelopes. my sister said it looked like the printing was done by the invite company (we really did s great job of matching it up). one word of caution if you print directly on the envelopes - get a ton of extra envelopes. it took many attempts before we got it right - i believe we screwed up about 25 envelopes. oh and one other warning - check your rubber printer rollers before you start your project. we had one worn out roller, and that caused some of our addresses to print out slanted.
My mom just did ours in her script handwriting.
It was free, looks much better than either of our penmanship, and will make all the ettiquete freaks in our family happy!
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@JoesWifey: I know exactly how you feel! This day in age, the additional cost of a pro calligrapher was a waste, in our eyes.
People just toss them anyway. So we also opted to address them using our own hand writing. (Well, mine...Mr. PG writes like a typical male!)
I plan on printing them out. I have a friend that offered to, but I have some other prijects that I would rather be done by hand than printed. But I will have to see in the end.
I think that printing on labels or envelopes is very inpersonal. I think they should be handwritten. It takes time, but it's more approriate. Myself and my friend are doing them.
My plan is to use a calligrapher for a part of our invitations and then have her match the addresses to that. I love hand lettering and think it's such an art.
Our wedding invite printer did "computerized Calligraphy" on our envelopes. We sent her all of the guest names and addresses and they came back to us looking beautiful. I too love the look of handwritten calligraphy, but in the end, this was the more economical "happy medium" that we could find :)
@Tag117~ You've obviously never tried to print on envelopes then. It takes forever and a lot of your "personal" time. :) I don't love labels, but I think printing on the envelopes with a pretty script is better than handwriting with crappy handwriting. Takes longer too!
We cheated and printed directly on to the envelopes, really lightly, and then traced over the calligraphy-style font with a calligraphy pen. It was a pain and took my cousin, my best friend, FH, and I a long time to do the 130 invitations, but it looked pretty good and saved a ton of money.
We've actually had several people ask us who did our calligraphy and if it was very expensive, so we must have fooled some of the guests, at least!
I handwrote the addresses on our invitations. I thought about printing them on the invites/using labels, but my mom freaked out when I mentioned that! Luckily, I have pretty nice cursive handwriting (thanks to being a teacher!) so I liked how they turned out.
KateMW - If you have crappy handwriting that of course you aren't going to address the envelopes yourself but I still believe that they should be handwritten by someone. Of course it's all a matter of taste though. It's your wedding! :)
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I did my best faux calligraphy with a calligraphy pen. I found a font online that I liked and studied how they made the capital letters and then emulated that. Then I wrote pretty normally for the rest of the lettering, but my handwriting is very neat to begin with. I love the idea of tracing over printed calligraphed letters!
My FI has a friend that does calligrapgy very well. We are going to ask him to take part by addressing the invites and possibly writing the actual invites. We'll see.
I plan on using a font I made from my own "neat" handwriting. That way it is still my handwriting, but I didn't have to spend a bunch of time actually writing all the addresses out.
I'm in the midst of doing my own calligraphy. It's not for the faint of heart, but I am lucky in that I took a calligraphy class in high school. I remember spending hours and hours doing the homework for that class and thinking it was all for no good reason.
Well, it all came flooding back when I took pen to paper and it's coming out pretty well. I'm using a true calligraphy script, but I chose one that wasn't very flowery, so it's not killing me too much... though I did go through an entire extra packet of envelopes so far! Whoops! My calligraphy=good, my spelling=not so much!
I'm going to print them on the envelopes and use "mail-merge". I figure they'll just get thrown out anyway and the people that really know us, know we're not really that fancy anyway.
I printed directly on the envelopes in a pretty script font and color that matched the invitations. We chose to go the less formal route anyway (only one envelope) and they looked MUCH better than any of my handwriting attempts. I had my guestlist/rsvp list in excel and also the mail merge tool. I don't feel bad for not personally handwriting every single one; by the time it reaches the recipient the envelope is all crinkled and dirty anyway (at least invitations I've received in the past have). TYs however, I've been handwriting all.
I just printed them out and made labels; I wanted to budget in everything except reception, I did my own invitations only $35 excluding mailing them, I figured well my reception is already lavish and expensive I need to curb everything else, people look at it thinks it's pretty 2 months later its clutter
I'm a busy professional with only 4 months to plan and just cant deal with all these little details that aren't important to me because of some etiquette book; you pick your battles or wind up in debt or stressed
I have really nice handwriting. I bought a nice pen and wrote them out. I added some *flair* to my letters, but nothing cray fancy, just pretty. Kind of like a casual script.
I HATE getting an invite in the mail where my name/address was printed on a sticky label and then slapped on the label, like the bride didn't care enough to hand address them herself. I just hate this. Especially for a *fancy* wedding. Ugh. I know it's snooty since so many of you are doing this, but it only took me like 3 hours to address all my invites. I did it while watching House.
Do y'all think it's ok to address invitations with block writing rather than calligraphy or a cursive script? I would really like to do them myself to save some money, but my actual script is not that great. I think I could do some cool looking block lettering though.
On that note, for the invitations themselves, what do y'all think about a block-type font for those too?
I'm just wondering if it would look weird to have scripty invitations and then the addressing in block lettering...
@ATLBelle - Just keep the formality and style of the wedding in mind when choosing the font. I've seen a lot of sample invitations with a mix of block and scripty. Our wedding is less formal so we are getting away with using a more contemporary font.
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