Disclaimer: The story I am about to tell is not intended to bash the
store from which I ordered these, but rather is meant as a cautionary tale aimed at brides considering ordering these, or any other, invitations from McPhersons (spelling?).
I originally found my invitations from a local store, The Front Porch, in Pennington, NJ back in January. Everyone there was great and Michelle assured me that I could order them between April and June in order to have plenty of time to get them in, assembled, and addressed for my October wedding. Therefore, we placed the order in (the beginning of) April, as I like to be ahead of the game.
They are the burnt orange pocket invitations with a tie.
We ordered them, customized the wording and motif all in accordance with the options given by the company in the book in which the invitations were found (we didn't like the modern wording of the sample, and opted for traditional wording). We bought our own ribbon to tie them, as I wanted chocolate brown and didn't feel like spending a fortune for their ribbon.
When they first came in fold up pocket covered FI's name, despite the proof being perfect & approved by myself, my mom and the woman at The Front Porch. They were sent out again, and again came back wrong. They were sent out again, at which time McPhersons realized that the size of the "backer card" was wrong. So they sent the proper ones. Great, now we can assemble them & get them out. Remember, I ordered in April, and by the time they were "right" it was the beginning of July. I'm glad I didn't wait until June to order them, or I'd be even more SOL right now.
My mom and I spent hours taking the backer cards and invitation cards together (since you know they don't come "assembled"), stuffing them all with the response cards, reception cards, hotel info, and directions to the venue - normal stuff. We tied them all with the ribbon and prepared to stuff them into the envelopes... all to find that they did not fit into the envelopes! We thought, okay, maybe we're doing this wrong... Ummm no. After an hour, we had only stuffed 7 extremely tight invitations. We called The Front Porch (TFP from now on...) and let them know via message. The call was returned after the holiday weekend, and I was told they were having new envelopes shipped. Great!
Not so much... they apparently do not make another envelope for any of their products and they sent the exact same ones!!! So here we go again.
After begging and pleading with them for all our frustrations, TFP arranges to have McPherson's completely re-do the invitations, trim them down (invites and backer cards), and tie them all for us using their ribbon (so now we're out the cost of the ribbon we bought separately, but oh well...fine), and we were promised they'd be right.
Okay.. so yesterday TFP calls and says, they're here! Hooray! (I thought). Turns out, now they are still not right! For some dumb reason, McP's decided to not only trim them down, (which is great since they actually fit now!) but to also completely realign the text and motif (the design do-dad) and shift it all up on the page. It looks absolutely stupid and I'm not sure WHO thought it was "okay" to send out to a client who has now had these re-done and re-printed 4 times. They looked nice all tied up, but it looks like a total screw up once you untie it and see how the text isn't centered on the page! Huge blank space at the bottom. Awesome. My last name is Murphy, which naturally... Murphy's law prevailed again!
So, to make matters even more fun, McPherson's is now claiming they aren't responsible because we told them we wanted the text moved up too... huh? Why the hell would I do that??? All they had to do is take the same invitation layout and crop the sides a bit. I don't understand why this is so hard. I feel like I should've just DYI'd them to begin with.
Oh, and they are paid for in full and McP's is "willing to give us 25% off". Seriously, that's it???
So bottom line, I still don't have invitations (wedding is October 7th, so time is ticking down...) and won't have them until at least next week or the following week now, and they still may not be right! I have no idea what they're going to do to solve this (oh, and they won't talk to me since I'm not a store representative with a contract with them... nice, huh? So much for customer service) My hands are tied, which is the worst feeling in the world. It's not TFP's fault, and I'm trying really hard not to be bridezilla. McP's is useless to try to talk to, even after they admitted that they've "had this problem before" with the invitations not fitting into the envelopes... well hmmm... maybe it's time to make new invitations or new envelopes, geniuses!
I'm sure this is a rare occurance, but I just want other brides to know what they are potentially getting into with this company. These invites are really cool (in my eyes) and eco-friendly (ish) since they are made from recycled paper, which I thought was great too. But, my experience has definitely made me the disgruntled customer and I don't want anyone else to be in this position. They're cute and great and all that, but take it from a Murphy - don't do it to yourself!!!
I'm sorry this is so long, and if you've read the whole thing, THANK YOU! I just really needed to get this out there! 