Postal Rates
I do not know why this is, but the post office is not consistent with what they charge for the postage on invitations, especially pocket fold invitations. The fees charged range from post office to post office and from teller to teller. If you have a postal teller tell you that your pocketfold invitations are over $1.75 each to mail then I would strongly advise you to try another post office before putting them in the mail. Every now and again, I will get a call from a client that tells me the post office told her that her invitations were $1.95 to mail. They claim that they are not “bendable” and cannot be run through the postal machines. In some instances, this could be the case, but in most instances this is not entirely accurate. I recently had to mail some pocketfold invitations for a bridal shower I am hosting and one post office told me they were $1.95 each to mail. Being that I am in the business, I knew this was not accurate so I went to my local post office. I ended up mailing them for $0.65 each. That was over a $50 savings for the number of invitations I needed to mail. I have even had clients that went to a post office one day, got one rate for the invitations, and then went to the same post office the next day (spoke to a different teller) and got another rate. I don’t know why this happens, and I know it is a hassle, but if you are mailing lots of invitations this could save you a lot of money.
Hand Canceling
I always advise my clients to hand cancel their invitation envelopes prior to putting them in the mail. What does this mean you ask? Well, hand canceling simply means that a human stamps a mark over the postage stamp so that the stamp cannot be reused, instead of putting it through a postal machine to do the canceling. Some invitations can get destroyed going through the machines, especially if they are very bulky, have a wax seal, crystals or other embellishments. So if you can reduce the number of machines that the invitations run through you have a better potential that they come out clean. The machines can also cause the addresses to smudge or smear, especially with metallic or glossy envelopes. Not all post offices will offer this service so my suggestion would be to go to your local post office on a non-peak time (weekday early mornings are usually best) and be kind to the postal teller when asking :). Kindness goes a LONG way, and some will even allow you to cancel the envelopes yourself. Hand canceling does not cost anything and it is 100% worth it.