Erin's Bridal Shower...Affordable Letterpress

You know, Erin's letterpress bridal shower invitations are proof that you don't have to break the bank to have gorgeous letterpress invitations. Erin's mother hosted a large bridal shower for her and her sister commissioned us to letterpress 75 invitations and reply postcards for the shower. I looked online at a popular invitation website whose name implies that their printed materials are exceedingly small (but they're not), and the pricing was only nominally cheaper. The tradeoff to get letterpress at such a great price is that you are only doing one color as opposed to the digital prints multiple colors. But I personally believe (of course I would) that the paper Joie Studio offers is better and the letterpress invitation just feels more expensive than digital prints.

These beauties were printed with eco-savvy vegetable oil ink on Stardream Chiara Coral (I believe). To save money, Erin's sister and I decided on letterpress printing in one color and bringing in another dimension of color with the paper. We had wanted to print them on Paper Source's luxe blush, but luxe blush has sadly been discontinued (I pleaded with Waste Not to bring it back, but *blah blah blah* "no one ordered it" - which I don't believe at all), and I remembered that Stardream had a very similar color, albeit shiny. I think this would have been gorgeous enough for an actual wedding invitation. Check it out:

I'm not a huge fan of opting towards letterpress reply postcards, but only because you don't save very much in printing them (or at all sometimes) and the postal service is not gentle on letterpress. By using postcards, though, the shower hosts saved about $12 in postage, which honestly is a decent amount. AND postcards are more eco-friendly in that they don't use envelopes.

Congratulations, Erin, on your upcoming nuptials! Be on the lookout here (they will be posted after the wedding) for her fantastic letterpress wedding invitations.