Postage Stamps

fallingtogether1017

Is anyone having a horrendous time finding postage stamps? I don't want to use just the USA Flag stamps, and want it to be wedding-y... but there isn't anything that matches my "theme" and I am going a little crazy about it! I looked at some custom stamps, but those are really expensive! How did you remedy this debacle?

manateehugger

You can order them on USPS's online store if you really want them (CLICK).

But I really wouldn't worry. I stressed about this too until I realize no one cares about the stamps - no one. Quick! What was the stamp on the last piece of social mail you've received?

Outer envelopes get all yucky with dirt and the postmark anyway.

Fran1985

Honestly just use the wedding ones if you want a wedding one. I just used the one with the cake and the one with the white roses. Please don't worry about matching a theme

fallingtogether1017

Very true!  I have no idea what the stamp looked like on the last piece of social mail I received

EAR123

I'm a paper geek so stamps are important to me, too. I also recommend the online USPS store as PDKH recommended. You may be surprised to see the variety. For example, they have maybe 3 or 4 love/wedding options that you cannot find at a local post office. My wedding is destination, in Las Vegas, and I wound up buying Nevada stamps for our save the dates. What is your theme? Maybe we can help you determine a good stamp to fit it.

You can also order personalized stamps on the USPS site with a special photo or monogram, though I am not a big fan of how they look.

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CMGragain

Have you had your invitation weighed by the USPS yet?  If it is standard weight, there are beautiful "Forever" stamps with orchids and flowers available in sheets.

jenijoyk

I just went through this yesterday at the post office... I purchased a bunch of the white roses stamps but I think they are really hideous. They just seemed slighly better than the weird multi-color, cartoony bouquet ones. But I really detest roses, so I came back to the office and ended up ordering the red "sealed with love" ones online. So now I'll be using the white roses stamps to mail all bills, possibly for the rest of my life because I now have 200 of them. Thank goodness they're "forever"....

jenijoyk

Sealed with love ones: https://store.usps.com/store/browse/uspsProductDetailMultiSkuDropDown.jsp?categoryNavIds=buy-stamps%3astamps-by-theme%3awedding-stamps&categoryNav=false&navAction=push&navCount=0&productId=S_578744&categoryId=wedding-stamps

 

AddieCake

I wasted an embarrassing amount of time on this before getting over myself and realizing almost nobody looks at the stamp.

emmyg65

I'm a dork and looked through the USPS online store to find cool stamps (did the same for our Christmas cards). They have tons of fun options. This is the one we chose:

atlastmrsg

I used "La Florida" and "Vintage Seed Packet" stamps. They're still out. They also have wedding ones with cake on them or ivory roses.

jynxiie

LOL I just used normal stamps.
One had a hay bale on it haha.

jenijoyk

I'll be honest, I considered the "Vintage Circus" stamps for a few select guests.

theartistformerlyknownas

I just used the wedding cake ones because I needed $0.70 ones. Exactly zero people said "oh hey, good call on the wedding stamp, I might have thought this was a jury summons if it had a flag on it."

vmj23

I used the cake ones the post office carries, although I had to add an additional stamp to it and had to use one with a chair on it...i don't think anyone cared.  

LittlePeachBlossom

Stamps get covered anyway when they cancel them. Put the energy elsewhere. Nothing wrong with the patriotic flag stamp.

mysticl

Mine had wedding rings on them. The clerk automatically pulled them out when she saw I was doing wedding invites.  

HobokensFury

DH drove me crazy and insisted we use the Pixar stamps. It took 4 trips to 3 different post offices to collect them all. Guess what- not one person mentioned them.

IrishPirate60

USPS once had a set of "deadly plants" stamps. I got those for the bills and used them for a couple of months. I had fun. I doubt anyone else noticed!

The current circus ones? Great picture of a tiger baring its teeth. I used that for the bill from the oral surgeon!

CMGragain

I ordered custom stamps for daughter's wedding from Zazzle on sale.  If you are careful picking your design, they can be a splurge without costing too much more.  They have sale stamp promotions from time to time.  Sign up for notices on their website.
Did it matter?  No, but it was fun.

jenijoyk

Guys! So I just took my giant box of invitations to the Post Office... and after all my stress over the stamps it was a hilarious disaster! I took my assembled invitation to a post office to have it weighed before I ordered my stamps (obviously!), special ordered the cute 49 cent "Sealed With Love" stamps online... waited for them to come... and was SO happy because they looked awesome with my sparkly gold metallic envelopes! I almost took a picture last night to post about how worth it it was to put the effort into getting a pretty stamp....

And OF COURSE when I went in today the lady was like, "Your envelopes are overweight by 0.1 ounce. You should have gotten a 70 cent stamp." Hahahaha. Whatever. So after all that effort I now have a tiny 21 cent Abe Lincoln stamp next to my perfect Sealed With Love stamp. 

The best part was when I was frowning over having to add a Lincoln stamp the lady behind the counter said, "If I were you, I'd just chance it. At least 75% of them will get through with the 49 cent stamp." What???? Hahaha. Um, I'm hoping for 100%, thanks though. 

southernbelle0915

I should also add here that we sent our STDs in postcard format. They didn't have wedding stamps for postcards, so we had to buy Hawaiian shirts. Then a few days before we went to mail them, the rates went up one cent. The only 1 cent stamps they carried had a picture of an old tiffany style lamp.... 

So yea, our STDs had Hawaiian shirts and a tiffany style lamp. Not exactly romantic, but literally not one person ever said a thing.

princessleia22

I made custom stamps using Stamps.com. They offer a more expensive "photo stamp" option, but you can actually upload any photo or image for their "Custom Net Stamps". So, I made "Custom Net Stamps" with our engagement photo on it, which I had photoshopped to add text saying "We're Getting Married" on bottom of it. My sister used Stamps.com too and designed stamps with their monogram to match design of their wedding invites. You can upload any image, with the exception of licensed material or stuff like that. So it's easy to do something that matches your personality or theme. And it only costs a few dollars per sheet of 24 stamps (depending on how many sheets you order). I think mine were $2/sheet, so it came out to about $0.08 over postage rate per stamp. So, it isn't expensive to do, especially when you compare it to zazzle or other custom stamp prices. You order the custom stamp sheets, then print the postage amount on them at home. The other advantage is that you can print stamps individually as you need them, so you only pay for the number of stamps you need, and don't end up with a bunch of leftover odd value stamps. And if you are out of stamps, then realize you missed one invite, you can easily print one more stamp. Another advantage, they have a deal with USPS so you save 1 cent per stamp for postage... so a standard first class stamp on stamps.com costs only $0.48, not $0.49. Really, that doesn't add up to much, but it's still savings. And you can print various denominations on them. So if you want to use them for STD & for invites, you can print $0.48 stamp for STD and $0.69 stamp for invite on the same stamp label sheet. So, there is a lot of flexibility in it. And it was fairly easy to use and figure out. Now the negatives: - They charge $15 monthly membership fee. BUT, they offer 1 month free trial, so if you sign up, order & print your stamps right away, and cancel at end of month (which should be plenty of time to stamp your invites), then you shouldn't have any fees. And I think they even added $5 to my account for free. If you go over that timeframe and get into membership, they had sent 3 postcards that add $5 to account each month (you have to mail in one per month), so it really only costs $10/month during that time... which is still cheaper than ordering stamps at Zazzle. - The custom stamps are larger size. They are 1-3/16" high x 1-3/4" wide. So, they may not fit well on smaller size envelopes, like RSVP's. Both my sister and I used the custom stamps for our invites, then just used regular forever stamps for RSVP due to stamp size. Once I discovered this non-advertised option/loop-hole, I was psyched. And they turned out really great. I actually had a good enough experience and it was so convenient to print at home as I needed them, that I really kind of wished I sent out enough mail to justify spending $15/month to keep the service. And I'll apologize in advance if TK messes up my paragraphs... but hopefully it doesn't. It's done it to me a couple times today, and it's especially annoying with a long post like this one.

princessleia22

Oh, and like others said, it really doesn't matter and most people won't notice. But it is fun to have custom stamps. And definitely take a completed invite to post office to get weighed and priced. When I was mailing my sister sample of her invite (I made her invites for her), I hadn't even thought about added postage cost of it being non-machinable. So, I think it became a $0.91 stamp instead of $0.69. If I had pre-ordered a bunch of custom $0.69 stamps, that would be horrible. Luckily, it was just a sample, so I only had one to send out and didn't care about pretty stamps for it. Oh, and not to get into it again, but with Stamps.com, they will actually refund you for unused postage. So, if you printed too many or wrong valuation on them, you can send them in for refund of the postage.

kla728

Wow, we must have just been really lucky... we used a cute cartoony red heart for invites and the white roses for RSVP cards.  I honestly thought about it for 30 seconds and that was it.  Glad this is one thing my OCD did not kick in on... I did go re-weigh one before mailing them all though, I was nervous about that (we got away with a normal stamp).

HobokensFury

lovedetailed said:

Zazzle.com has a great selection and is not as expensive as creating a custom stamp. They have great sales and deals too! Make sure to take a sample invitation assembled to the post office before you order your stamps! 

xx,

Brooke 

www.lovedetailed.com

@KnotPorscha‌ she has been advertising her website all over these forums. Please ban.

jenijoyk

@southernbelle0915 that made me laugh so hard!!!

jenijoyk

I would add that just getting your assembled invite weighed isn't enough. It should be, but my experience was proof that it wasn't. Ask them if your invite is close to the limit, and if it is even remotely close, ask them to weigh it on a second scale. Ask if they calibrated the scale that morning (they are supposed to every morning, I have learned, through this experience). 

I brought mine in and the lady weighed it and said it was FINE. Hence, I purchased 200 49 cent stamps. Then I took them back to be mailed and the only difference was the ink on the envelope. And it was JUST over the limit. The lady behind the counter said that the first lady's scale might not have been calibrated that morning like it was supposed to. UGH!!!!

futuremrsog15

jenijoyk said:

I would add that just getting your assembled invite weighed isn't enough. It should be, but my experience was proof that it wasn't. Ask them if your invite is close to the limit, and if it is even remotely close, ask them to weigh it on a second scale. Ask if they calibrated the scale that morning (they are supposed to every morning, I have learned, through this experience). 

I brought mine in and the lady weighed it and said it was FINE. Hence, I purchased 200 49 cent stamps. Then I took them back to be mailed and the only difference was the ink on the envelope. And it was JUST over the limit. The lady behind the counter said that the first lady's scale might not have been calibrated that morning like it was supposed to. UGH!!!!

Wow, that would be so annoying. Does adding the stamp add weight too?! We have a postage machine at my office. I was going to use that, but then again maybe I should go in to the post office to make sure the shape of the envelope won't screw it all up.

ctr24

nicoann what did you print the stamps on? directly on each envelope?

PineapplePopsicles

ctr24 said:

nicoann what did you print the stamps on? directly on each envelope?

Looks like you order the stamp paper (sort of like a sheet of labels?) and print on that.   

Quoted:

You order the custom stamp sheets, then print the postage amount on them at home. The other advantage is that you can print stamps individually as you need them, so you only pay for the number of stamps you need, and don't end up with a bunch of leftover odd value stamps. And if you are out of stamps, then realize you missed one invite, you can easily print one more stamp.