Weddingbee boards

I don't really know if the hive can help me here since it may be a specific issue with my photo printer but it's worth a shot...

Has anyone done their own invites with their photo printer using the "borderless" feature to achieve a full-bleed?

I'm making the invites in Adobe Illustrator and saving them as a PDF--the PDF is set up to be 8.5x11 (I'll cut the pieces later) and the graphcis go to the edges and everything LOOKS how I want it.

I set in the printer settings for it to be borderless and all of that.. yet when it prints out, it actually cuts off like 1/8th of an inch all around--as if it prints BIGGER than I want and just lops off the edges a bit.  There's no way I can compensate for this without simply experimenting and actually printing--the previews do not show me what actually gets printed. :/  When I adjust in Illustrator, unexpected things happen--if I scale the entire thing down a bit (say 97%) it then prints inside with a margin... I just don't know how to make it do what I want.

I have an HP Photosmart C6280.  I thought this would be easy and it's really turning into a nightmare. :(

For those of you that did print your own invites, did you just print with a margin and had it cut off when you got your paper cut?