Wedding Invitation Postage: How to Mail Your Invites

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You dedicate a lot of time and energy to designing and customizing and perfecting your wedding invitations and/or paper suite. So, you’re probably eager to get them sent out. One mailing mishap, though, and the process can get really tricky (read: frustrating). To avoid any mistakes, we’re laying out all you need to know about how to mail wedding invitations, including information on wedding invite postage. Read on to ensure your save the dates and invitations don’t end up back at your door.

How Much Postage You Will Need to Send Out Wedding Invitations

Because wedding invitations require a few different mail correspondences, we estimate that couples will need 3-4 stamps per household they are mailing invitations to.

• Save the Dates usually require only one postage stamp as they will usually weigh under the standard amount of postage limits
• Wedding Invitations often include more materials, which can impact the cost of postage. Because of the added weight of additional materials, wedding invitation suites typically require 1-2 stamps each. There are also a handful of stamps available that allow for parcels of up to 2 oz. each, which can be perfect for mailing wedding invitations
• RSVP cards should include postage when they get to your guests to prevent any roadblocks in their responses. These typically weigh under the standard amount of postage and will only require 1 stamp

Save the Dates

Before you even assemble your wedding invitations, you need to create and mail out your save the dates. Breath easy, because this is the simplest part of wedding postage. In most cases, your save the date postcards will only include one piece, meaning it’ll weigh at or under the standard amount (1 ounce) and only require one stamp. To avoid any being sent back, send them from your local post office, especially if they’re a custom shape.

Invitation Suite

Your invitation suite (or paper suite) is where things get more complicated. To start, the number of stamps you’ll need—and the cost of mailing each invitation—largely depends on the number of materials you include. As you add additional enclosure cards, the weight of each invitation envelope will increase, therefore you’ll need extra postage. A standard weight stamp, or “Forever Stamp,” costs 55 cents and each additional ounce costs 15 cents. With maps, directions cards, itinerary cards, and much more, the overall cost of stamps for your wedding invitations can add up. We advise including the essentials in your invitation suite and making all other information available on a wedding website.

Once you’ve assembled your wedding invitation suite, we recommend taking one to your local post office and weighing it. Then, you can figure out exactly how much postage each invitation will need.

Photo Credit // Zola

RSVP Response Cards

Technically, these are included in your wedding invitation suite, but they bear specific mentioning. Having your response cards prepped and ready to use is vital, since giving your guests extra work might delay their replies. To avoid any mishaps, tuck the card under a RSVP envelope addressed to the host’s residence and include a postage stamp (or pre-stamp the envelope). Not only does this make the process easy on your guests, but it prevents anyone from dropping their RSVP cards in the mail without postage. Not to mention, it’s not great etiquette to make someone pay postage to RSVP to your event. Make the mailing process on both ends painless by having your response cards ready to go.

Things to Consider

Aside from total weight, there are additional factors that might affect the process and cost of mailing wedding sending out your invitations. Some things to consider when creating your suites are:

• Card stock: In case you’re unfamiliar, card stock is a paper stock that’s thicker and more durable than typical printer or writing paper. This is likely what you’re using for all of your wedding send-outs. Card stocks come in different weights (or thickness); the higher the weight, the thicker the paper. While this makes your invites look and feel professional, it also adds weight to your suite, which means you’ll need to pay for extra postage.
• Decorative pieces: Gold foil, ribbon, twine, flowers—each of these add a beautiful, unique touch to your envelopes. But considering how delicate these pieces are, you’ll want them to be hand-processed (more on that below). This costs an additional 21 cents per invitation.
• Calligraphy: Invitations that are addressed in calligraphy have a higher chance of being returned or undeliverable, compared to clearly printed addresses. In fact, many calligraphers state in their contracts that up to 20% may be sent back to you. It’s possible that the postal worker won’t consider it legible or that the ink will become smudged and unreadable. This doesn’t mean you should ditch calligraphy altogether, just be aware that you might have to re-send some invitations.

Photo Credit // Zola

Hand-Processing and Hand-Canceling

After all of the time (and money) you’ve spent creating your invitation suites, make sure they’re sent out in good hands. Literally. Hand-processing and hand-canceling are two ways in which you can prevent them from being bent or soiled via machine.

Simply put, hand-processing means that your postmaster sorts your invitations by hand, rather than by a machine. As we said, this costs an additional 21 cents but also reassures you that your wedding invite envelopes won’t be damaged in delivery.

Likewise, you can have your invitations hand-canceled. Have you ever seen those squiggly lines that are stamped over a mail stamp when you receive a letter? That means the stamp has been “canceled” (or spent) and can’t be used anymore. This is typically done by machine, but you can request to have your wedding invitations canceled by hand. In this case, either the postmaster will cancel each individual stamp or will hand it to you to do yourself (usually for free!). You may have to spend a chunk of time in the post office, but it’s worth the knowledge that your invites were handled well.

Non-machinable Elements

There are some decorative inner envelope elements that are considered “non-machinable.” This means that they’re unable to be processed or canceled through a machine. You’ll need to pay the additional 21 cents to have them hand-processed and canceled no matter what. The following are popular customizations that are considered non-machinable:

• Envelopes with wax seals
• Envelopes that are more than ¾ of an inch thick
• Envelopes that are square or custom sizes

Now that you’ve prepared your invitations, stamps and all, learn the right time to send them out.