Guest Addressing Part 2 - Printing
There are so many elements that go into a full stationery design for your wedding invitations, and one of the often overlooked, but so very important, elements is address printing for your envelopes - so let's talk about it! Whether for Save the Dates, your Wedding invitations or your RSVP envelopes, address printing is one of those things that you may not think you need but is a huge time saver and completes your wedding invitation design all around.
In Part 1 of this Addressing series we discussed building your guest address list to prepare for addressing your invitations, so if you missed that you can check it out here!
What is Address Printing?
So first of all, what is address printing? When you receive an envelope in the mail and your address and the sender's address are printed in ink on the envelope rather than hand written, that indicates that they pre-printed the addresses on the envelopes before getting everything ready to mail! Address printing is very common for return addresses because the address is always the same - and many people use things like stamps and return address labels to achieve the same idea (i.e. not hand writing every single return address).
Why is Address Printing Necessary?
One of the obvious reasons why you would want to include address printing on your wedding invitation envelopes is that it saves a ton of time and effort. Think about having to hand stamp, hand write, or hand stick the return address to the back of 100 envelopes. And then think again about doing the same thing on the front of the RSVP envelope so your guests know where to send their response cards. And then think one more time about hand writing every single household's address on the front of their invitation. Phew! Makes me tired just thinking about it! But seriously, that is a lot of time and effort that could be spent doing other fun wedding planning activities or just another fun activity in general.
The second, and not so widely considered, reason that address printing is necessary is that it brings your entire custom stationery design together. For that reason I always include full envelope address printing (we're talking guest addresses, return address, and RSVP address) in my base custom wedding invitation package for my custom wedding invitation clients - I think it is that important! And even for my Collections Suites clients the return and RSVP address come standard and they can add on guest addressing. Think about it for a second - you invest a lot of time and money into gorgeous custom wedding invitations that truly fit your vision for your day and reflect your personality. But then you hand write all of the addresses and the design doesn't quite seem so cohesive anymore. It's lost some of that beautiful design concept - I'm not saying your hand writing isn't nice, but it's really not the same! To truly complete the look of your wedding invitation design it begins on the envelope, and the envelope is the first thing your guests will see!
How is Address Printing Done?
The best thing about address printing is that it's pretty easy for you! At least when it comes to the return and RSVP addresses. All you have to do is provide the address you would like to use and I design and layout the address on the back flap on the envelope in your design to coordinate with your suite. Then when ordering your suite I have the envelopes printed at that time. And how have I not mentioned white ink yet?! If we use a dark colored envelope we can have your addresses printed in white ink - so. dreamy.
There is a little bit more effort involved in guest address printing (also known as variable printing) on your part, but don't fear because it's something you would have to do anyway! We would just need to have it finalized a little sooner than if you were hand addressing. I'm talking about your guest list of course! If you are sending Save the Dates you will have the guest address list finalized pretty early on other than maybe adding a few people to the final invitation list and updating any addresses for moves (only send Save the Dates to people you are positive you are inviting!).
Once you have your spreadsheet all ready with guest names and addresses all you have to do is send it over to me and I take care of the rest. I'll design the front of the envelopes to coordinate with your suite and use my lovely Adobe Design Suite to format your addresses for printing in that design setup. Then we send off to the printer and they print your addresses on your envelopes for you - so easy!
So to recap, all that is required of you for address printing is providing a return and RSVP address (if different from the return address) and a spreadsheet with your guest names and addresses. So much easier and less time consuming than hand writing every single envelope!
How to Collect and Format Guest Addresses
One of the challenging parts of wedding planning can be getting the information you need from your guests in order to actually invite them. If you have several addresses you need to collect, I recommend breaking up the list among you, your fiancé, and your families. For example, you can reach out to your friends (via text or email), your fiancé reaches out to his, and your families reach out to their friends and family members. This relieves you as the bride from having to collect everything. You could also just type up an email and send it out requesting addresses, but that also requires gathering everyone's email address to do so - it may just be easier to break up the list among your wedding planning crew!
Once you hear back from everyone (it may take repeated requests), you can begin formatting your addresses for printing. I always provide my clients with a spreadsheet template, but it is really quite simple to setup:
Column A: Name (as you would like it to appear on the envelope - The Eubanks Family, Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Eubanks, etc.)
Column B: Address 1 (Main Street Address)
Column C: Address 2 (Apartment or Suite Number, if applicable)
Column D: City Column E: State (abbreviation or full state name depending on your envelope design)
Column F: Zip Code
Note: Sometimes you may have foreign country addresses - you can make a note for your stationer and leave these out separately to be manually added in since they do not usually correspond perfectly to the US setup.
Once you finalize this list and send it over, you are done! Now you really can sit back and enjoy the design process!
Address printing is something that seems so simple and maybe not fully necessary on the surface, but once you see the potential for it and the value in it, it becomes a need (isn't that true with just about anything?). I'd love to help you design your custom invitation suite, address printing and all, so if you have any questions or are ready to get started, let's do it!
