Wedding Stationery
The Options Available To You
A wedding is a truly magical experience and as excited (or nervous) as you may be for the big day there is a lot of planning and work that has to go into making sure that your big day goes by without a hitch (well, only one hitch!).
One thing that you should not take for granted is your wedding stationery. The stationery that you send out is a reflection of yourself. The right stationery is able to provide visual and tactile cues to all your guests to your permanence, stability and overall your own individual identity.
I write this article in order to give you an idea of the different options available to you and to talk you through the printing process for each one.
Firstly let’s discuss the different items of stationery you might need:
- Engagement announcements cards/invites - When the announcement is first made it is often difficult to let all of your family and friends know about your good news, a handy way to help this is to send out engagement announcements to everyone, followed by invitations to everyone that you would like to invite to the engagement party.
- Wedding Announcements - As with the engagement announcement, a wedding announcement is a card that you can send to everyone that you know to let them know that you are getting married.
- Save the Date cards - These are often sent out up to a year in advance of the wedding. They are mostly used in one of three situations:
- You are having a destination wedding and your guests will need to travel to get there
- Your wedding is on a public holiday when it is very likely people will have other plans if they have not been given enough notice (i.e. Easter) or if your wedding is during the peak of the wedding season.
- You have guests that are going to be travelling from abroad to get to your wedding and they will require time to organise flights and hotels etc
- Wedding invites - These are the main invites that you will be sending out to everyone that will be attending your wedding. There are hundreds of different choices available. My best advice is to take samples of the things you like to the printer so they can best advise you on what you need.
- Reply cards - These give your guests an easy option to notify you if they will be attending or not, and you are also able to include an addition in case any of your guests have special dietary requirements. This allows you to plan ahead with the caterers for both the number of people to cater for as well as any special meals they will have to consider.
- Thank you cards - Of course after the big day you will have a mountain of gifts that you will have to send out thank you cards for. By ordering them in advance from a printer you can get the majority of the work done before the big day by having a standard thank you message printed on all the cards, thereby leaving you free to enjoy your honey moon.
- Place cards - Regardless of if you are having a plated dinner or a buffet it is often easier to allocate everyone a seat before hand to ensure each table has the right mix of people. A place setting is an easy way to let everyone know where they are sitting without any unnecessary hassle. The standard cards will come with gilded edges and will be blank although most printers will be able to organise for you to have your guest’s names hand written on with calligraphy.
There are several different types of printing that you can use for your wedding invites depending on what you would like; the most common ones are engrave printing, lithography, thermography, and letterpress printing. I will try and describe the main differences between each of them.
- Lithography - Modern high volume lithography is used to produce just about any smooth, mass produced item with print on it from books to posters. In this type of printing the plates are made from either aluminum or plastic and are covered with a photosensitive emulsion. A photographic negative of the desired image is placed in contact with the emulsion and the plate is exposed to light. The plate is then affixed to a drum on a printing press. Rollers apply water, which covers the blank sections of the plate but is repelled by the emulsion of the image area. Ink applied by another set of rollers is repelled by the water and only adheres to the emulsion of the image area. If this image were to be transferred to paper or card now it would be too wet so this plate is then rolled against a drum with a rubber blanket, which squeezes away the water and picks up the ink. The paper or card is then rolled across the blanket drum to transfer the image to the paper.
- Letterpress - Fine letterpress is crisper than lithography because of the impression into the paper giving greater visual definition to the type an artwork. Most letterpress printers can only print 1 color at a time so bear that in mind when choosing multiple colours, and the inking system on letterpress equipment can be a little less precise which can prove a problem with some graphics and detailed white or “knocked out” area’s such as small serif type, although a skilled printer should be able to overcome all of these problems.
- Thermo graphic printing - Thermography is a post printing process that is achieved today with using traditional printing methods coupled with a thermography machine. The areas selected for raised printing are printed with inks that do not contain dryers or hardeners so that they remain wet during the application of a special powder polymer; the ink is dried and hardened later during the heating process. After the application of the powder polymer the excess powder is then vacuumed up and only the powder that has been in contact with the ink remains. The sheet is then conveyed through an oven system and exposed to temperatures of between 900 – 1300 degrees Fahrenheit. It is the heat in this oven that causes the ink and polymer to harden and causes it to rise up above the surface.
- Engraved printing - There are many types of printing that try and copy engraved printing, and as they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In my own opinion nothing comes close to the time honored traditions that comes with Engraved printing. With a quality that is second to none. The difference between true engraved stationery and its common imitators like thermograph are remarkable, Thermograph is to engraving in the same fashion that polyester is to wool, and vinyl is to leather. In the process of engraving, ink is flooded over a hand engraved copper plate in an engraving press. The plate now covered in ink is wiped by die wipe paper leaving ink only in the engraved crevices of the plate. Paper is fed into the press and stamped between the plate and the counter (the counter is a thick piece of card that presses against the plate at the image area) each counter is custom made by stamping the plate against it, cutting out the unstamped areas, filling any detailed areas with packing paper and then covering with another piece of card which is shaped to get rid of any sharp edges this is to stop unnecessary bruising, which is a sign of bad quality. When the counter hits the plate under high pressure the paper is forced into the engraved crevices and the result is a sharp tactile feel from the ink combined with the raised surface of the paper.
There are some extra’s that you will probably want to consider for your cards there are Blind embossing, gilding and plate marks.
- Blind embossing - Blind embossing is a similar process to engraved printing but it does not use ink. What you end up with is a 3 dimensional raised lettering that looks sharp but is still understated it is normally used for a monogram at the top of a card or it can also be used to include an address at the back of the envelopes.
- Gilding - You are able to guild all your stationery as well in either silver or gold. The traditional way has not changed in well over 100 years and involves cutting the cards to size and setting them in a clamp where they are beveled and shaped by hand before being foiled with either gold or silver leaf. The other option is the mass produced option where the edges are, more often than not, just spray-painted with gold ink.
- Plate marks - You are able to have a plate mark left on all of your engraved printed stationery and invitations. This involves running your invitations through with a blank plate to create a centralized square or rectangle where all of your text and images will be printed this serves two purposes. It allows you to frame all of your invitations and gives the card a decorative border it can also help with improving the quality of the paper if the paper is very rough it will smooth it out and really make the printing done show up.
Lastly there are just some tips to consider before you go in to order your stationery.
- Paper: you are able to choose both the color and the weight. Most couples choose to go with a more traditional white or cream but that should not stop you choosing the color you want. It is normally best to send out a heavy card as the extra thickness allows for better printing and the quality of a heavy card in unsurpassed. All good printers should have a sample book to show you the different colors available as well as the different thicknesses of paper available to you.
- Inks: Inks are available in any colour you can imagine. There should normally not be an extra charge for using colored ink, unless you decide to use gold, silver or white. There might be extra charges if you decide to use more than one color as certain forms of printing only allow you to print one color at a time and any additional colors mean having to do a new print run.
If you would like to add an image to your stationery bring examples to show the printer. They will be able to advise you on what the restrictions will be and how the image will look once it has been printed.
There are 2 main types of card to consider a single card or a fly portrait. A single card as the name suggests is just a single card with printing on one side. A fly portrait is a card with a fold down the side with printing on the front and on the inside, (depending on what style of printing you use you may have to include an insert to contain the main bulk of the invitation).
Before you have your plate engraved for printing, ask the printer to email you a PDF copy of your card to double-check everything. When they are doing this you can ask them to come up with alternative presentations maybe using different fonts or different spacing allowing you to choose which ever one you like the most or taking your favorite parts from all and merging them into a new image.
Most printing companies will include the price of envelopes in the cost of the cards but always confirm that they do, as some will charge you extra to order envelopes. Always also confirm that the envelopes will be sized to fit the cards that you are ordering.
You do have the option to tissue line the envelopes this gives the invite just a little protection in case the ink is rubbed off in transit, (although with modern inks it is very rare for this to happen) and it can add a little bit of color to you envelope.
I hope this makes it easier to make your decision on what to choose for your stationery and what to look for in the printer you choose. I have tried to include as much of the experience and advise that we at Capital of London have gained in over 20 years of printing experience. I wish you all the best of luck for the big day and many years of happiness to come.
Author: Wayne Lawrence Pires
Website: - www.capitaloflondon.com
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