To Letterpress or Inkjet
Tara Posted on Wednesday, January 2, 2008 at 8:57AM We have made significant progress on our invitations. I think we have completed the design... I am still scouring iStockPhoto to double check that there isn't something I like better... but we are nearly there. There are also a few tweaks that need to be made with the spacing and margins and such.
So now the decision that is keeping me up at night is how we are going to print them. Basically it comes down to letterpress or inkjet. And from there it comes down to cost. We are on a really tight budget and the practical side of me says that given my audience the money would be better spent elsewhere or even left to give us a little cushion or *gasp* come in under budget. The emotional side of me says 'but letterpress is so pretty and it is our wedding!'
Here our our options:
1. DIY Letterpress
I explored this option a few months ago but hadn't found a great way to accomplish this without spending thousands on buying the equipment. But during the past week I came across ReadyMade magazine and this article with pretty good directions on how to build and do the printing yourself in a fairly economical way. I think we could do it but it would be time consuming for sure. {I am definitely subscribing to this magazine though...}
2. Inexpensive Letterpress Shop
Then I stumbled across the Mercurio Brothers printing through the boards on Wedding Bee. It is really inexpensive compared to everything else I have seen. And works quite well for us since we have already designed our invitations. If we did one color printing it would be $200 for the invites. We could then either pay the $147 for the rsvp card or simply print it at home. Not bad!
3. Print 'Em at Home
*Big sigh* Really we could just print them off on our inkjet printer for the cost of a cartridge (which we will buy anyways in the upcoming months). My mom already bought us the paper so that isn't a cost with this option. And our printer has done a surprisingly nice job printing the magnets and our holiday cards so...
The practical part of me knows that I really should just print them off at home. My family and friends would hopefully be equally as thrilled regardless of the print method. But letterpress is so pretty! Ugh. I think I am going to just take a step back from the invitations and start to focus on other projects for a while. We have some time and can revisit this decision in a few weeks.
{Images from ReadyMade, Mercurio Brothers, HP}
Reader Comments (6)
I love love love letterpress, but I think you can get away with ink-jet and still have it be beautiful and chic.
Agreed, I am completely in love with the look of letterpress! If you decide to print at home though, the kind of paper you choose can make SUCH a difference. Ink Jet printing can look amazingly rich & beautiful on the right paper.
I agree with the 2 previous posts -we ended up going with inkjet and it ended up looking very pretty on the paper we went with, which had a bit of a sheen. However, i would highly recommend doing a bunch of test copies to make sure you have the formatting right.
This decision was a good one for us b/c we got quite a few phone calls from people whose children had thrown away the invitation, or the invitation got lost, etc. When I heard this, I was glad we didn't spend the money on the letterpress route! Happy New Year!
Totally agree too...I have come to realize the paper is a big part of what makes the invitation looks great when you use inkjet.
what about thermography? it's cheaper than letterpress but still has a great texture?
thanks for the thoughts on this topic! We will see what the contract from the caterer looks like... that might make a difference in the decision on how much I have to spend on printing!
:)