This is a follow up to our post about affordable wedding invites. These invites were designed by the bride and groom Stephanie Mead and Doug Kohnen at Docent Creative. Doug did some beautiful illustrations that turned out stunning on press. We letterpress printed and trimmed the cards for them. They are dense black ink on Crane Lettra 110lb Pearl White, 100% cotton. They sent us some photos of how they assembled everything with a tag and ribbon. They even silk screened their own envelopes. So, how do you get a gorgeous wedding invitation for a reasonable price?

We’ve been asked about providing templates for wedding invite press sheets. We’ve shown some images below as an example of  how this invite template was laid out on the press sheet. But really, most any card size configuration can work. This is a 10 x 13 size press sheet, very common to our press room. That size represents great economy as we trim those sheets from even larger parent size sheets. When more cards are required in an invitation set, we can move to a larger press sheet. The point of talking about press sheets is to help people understand the process. When we can print everything together, that saves money. Since letterpress prints only one color at a time, more colors in a design mean more time on press, which means more money. The more we can print at a time, the better the deal.

We typically do not have clients send their projects to us as a press sheet layout, just your production ready design files are perfect. We lay out our own press sheets based on the pieces being printed, so we are sure it will print well on our presses.

So how much does it cost? The short answer is that every invite is different based on the needs of the couple. All of our letterpress work is custom. Prices for a job will vary based on the paper, quantity and number of colors. But as an example we can say that a project like this one color, single sided invite costs  $500 to $600 dollars based on 100-150 quantity. That is among the most reasonable of prices we have seen for this amount of letterpress. This design was supplied to us by the bride and groom. However, if design services are needed, we can do custom design work as well for additional cost.

NOTE: We do not have a price list. All projects are estimated based on the custom needs of our clients. If you need a price for your project please contact us. If you are on a budget, tell us what you have to work with. It helps us to know what a client wants to spend to put together a set of production specifications that will make the project possible to letterpress. (less expensive paper, size and number of cards, etc.) We do have a $300 project minimum.

For an estimate mail us at: numbers_at_studioonfire_dot_com

The column layout using justified type accents information and creates heirarchy in a way unique to wedding invitations. The invite set was letterpress printed in our studio with black and silver ink on a single press sheet to keep costs reasonable. (just the little dotted lines of hearts are in silver) The whole invitation set uses Crane Lettra 110lb Pearl White cotton paper stock with matching envelopes. The program card was printed separately closer to the wedding date. It is a very long and narrow card format with printing on each side to handle all the program information. All in all, simple type, done up proper.

We do not have a library of wedding invitations to choose from like many letterpress shops. Our approach to weddings is strictly custom. All the wedding work we print is either supplied by other designers or created in our studio.

Michael Carpenter at Switch Creative created these for his own wedding. We admire the simplicity and the typographic restraint. Three cheers to couples who can design their own invites and live to tell the tale.

You can see how he got all four of these cards printed together by comparing the final cards to the press sheet. The Invite, Reply, Save the Date and Thank You all pressed together makes the cost much more attractive than pricing them all individually. So think about the various pieces you need we’ll get them  together on a sheet for you. It’ll save you money and create marital bliss.