Weddings in North Carolina

Yesterday my daughter and I met with Brian Allen at the Officina Briani letterpress studio in Raleigh NC. Brian is a very intelligent and very patient man; we spent more than an hour looking through his samples, picking colors and typefaces for my daughter’s wedding invitations, and he has a wonderful sense of what will look great.

Letterpress in my opinion is one of the wedding luxuries that’s absolutely worth the money – it isn’t often in this day and age that you can hold such a lovely, handmade article in your hand. It’s like a gift to everybody who receives it.

Looking at letterpress on the internet does not do it justice. The glory is its texture and the way the deeply indented, crisp-edged letters catch light and shadow; the gorgeous colors on the thick, textured paper…

I truly believe in supporting local artists and Brian is a wonderful guy. My daughter approved a design and color scheme and we can’t wait to see the results…

I wrote to a company called handfans-direct.com and received an answer from John Millang (phone 800-984-9943) about hand-fans for weddings. He sent me these samples.

Hand fans for weddings

They appear to be the same company as idpromotionalaids.com – I mention that because on the second site there are all manner of other cute things which can be personalized.

The price I received from this company for this kind of fan was:

1. For unlaminated 4-color fans, printed on one side, the charge would be $151 including press setup, for 250 fans.

2. For laminated 4-color fans, 200 would cost $235.

They accept pdf files for uploading. I have some questions pending with the vendor (for instance, are the handles plastic (like the ones I got) or wooden (like the pictures on the website) but I can attest that these fans are sturdy and well printed. We’re going to use this company for my daughter’s wedding.

You know I’m sort of in love with our local letterpress artisans. The folks at Officina Briani are having a fabulous sale. From the email:

Officina Briani knows that times are tough, so we are offering our award-winning letterpress services for unheard of prices! Now is the perfect time to make that investment in quality which will set you apart. I am pleased to announce Officina Briani’s Making Lemonade Letterpress Sale for the month of July!

On all orders during the month of July

The Front Porch
Four piece set: 400 total printed pieces
Printed on 110 pound Cranes Lettra 100% cotton paper.
5×7 flat note card, Personalized or logo
4.25×5.5 flat note cards, thank you card
one color with free Matching Printed Envelopes: $325

The Southern Belle
Wedding Invitations or Social invitations
Four piece set: 400 total printed pieces
Printed on 110 pound Cranes Lettra 100% cotton paper
5×7 flat invitation, 4.25×5.5 flat reply card
one color with free Matching Printed Envelopes for each: $375

Sweet Tea with lemon special
Two piece set, 200 total pieces
5×7 flat card with envelopes
one color $210

Just Hot Enough
100 4×6 flat note cards. Personalized with your name
Choice of Fonts Choose between several ink colors Envelopes included
$88

Surviving the Heat
50 4×6 flat note cards. Personalized with your name
Choice of Fonts Choose between several ink colors
Envelopes included $75

For special pricing on other projects, please call or email for more information.
Jennifer Brauer
Officina Briani
Director of Sales and Marketing
C. 919.810.8473
jennifer@officinabriani.com

Found via digg at metalmother.com, it was printed by Kayrock screenprinters.

Today, as part of my investigation of local letterpress printers, I visited Travis Friedrich of Parklife Press. He had warned me he was expecting delivery of a new printing press, and wouldn’t be able to talk much, but I thought watching the operation would be very cool. And so it was!

Here he is about half an hour after I arrived. The lady who sold him the machine had wheedled her friend, a real estate agent (who says: “I can’t believe it, housing prices in Virginia are so good right now, and we have so many wonderful listings, and mortgages are so low, why aren’t people buying?” – my PSA for her…) into driving this gargantuan artifact down to North Carolina in a rental truck.

The old press, which Betsy was selling because there is not enough work to keep it busy in Fairfax Virginia, weights about 4,000 pounds. Travis is installing it in his shop, which is the garage of his home in Carrboro, NC.

I bet he isn’t planning to move anytime soon.

Here is one of the machines he owns, I drooled over it.


Here’s his paper-cutter, manufactured in the 19th century and still going strong.


While I waited and watched the huffing and puffing (it was 92 degrees and just past noon, exactly the right conditions for humping a 4,000 pound machine out of a U-Haul), I discovered a box full of used polyresin plates, and Travis said they were just going back to the factory to be recycled so I could have some. I chose this, for example.

As I explained yesterday, these days very few people are actually setting metal (or wood) letters in quoins backwards and running them through a press. Instead, they design on computer and send the files off to be converted into these polyresin plates.

Travis is a super-nice young man. I hope his business will prosper!

This was my last view of him, an hour after I arrived. I hope he managed to get the thing out of the truck eventually.

Go to his website to see prices and better pictures of his perfect, meticulous work, but in the mean time here are some pictures I took while I was there. You can click on any one of them for a larger view:

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I hate being jerked around by vendors, and there’s a lot of that going around. I was a typesetter for years so my daughter asked me to help her with her wedding invitations (and maybe “save the date” cards).

A cheap, reliable printer I use is 123 Print.com.

Here is their price chart. Currently (April 2009) the cost for 100 wedding invitations is $36.95-42.95 (depending on the type of paper) plus $9.97 shipping/handling. That includes printing on the front and inside, and also matching envelopes.

As you’ll see from the price chart, there are other options, like postcards or flat cards.

They sometimes have coupons on line – you can search for them.

Here are some of their folded wedding invitation blanks:

first page of wedding invitation and announcement samples

second page of wedding invitation and announcement samples

For people who like to DIY … at their site you’ll see you can choose your text for the front and inside of the wedding invitation, and then choose font, etc.

For brides and grooms who are overwhelmed with all the other details and want some help… Sometimes there are just too many choices. For instance, there are hundreds of printers and middlemen on the web eager for your wedding and bridal shower and thank you card invitations order. Some are very fancy. Most are pretty expensive (I personally think 123 Print is about the most affordable.)

Just now I looked at their formatting alternatives and they’re perfectly nice. However, there are zillions of cool typefaces on the web including wedding scripts much nicer than those offered by 123Print.

Since I was a professional typesetter, naturally I love beautiful typefaces! So, as an experiment, I am offering to do this for you for $5 (Paypal):

Send your text to me, choose a typeface, and I’ll format the card and send you a .jpg file with the simplest possible instructions on how to upload it. They’ll do the rest.

You can choose one of their blanks, or if you’re tired of choosing, just use this very simple one:

It must be obvious that if I’m only charging $5 I’m not doing it for the money. I’m curious to see if there’s a need for this kind of help – and I wonder if anybody is reading this blog! Email me if you’re interested.