Wedding Blog

what does hand cancelled mean?

-roxan

I had to sit there and hand cancel our 125 invitations with the help of my fiance. I thought the post office did it, so we stood in line for 20 mins, go to the desk and were handed to stamps to do it ourselves.

nj post office was really easy to work with. either they did it infront of me or had to me it. i was way more comfortable doing it for them. also, there was no charge.

i had no problems with getting my invites hand cancelled at the wtc post office. they were super nice!

i think hand cancelling is when they don’t do the stamping thingies thru machines…to prevent the invitations from getting wrinkled or ruined… correct me if i’m wrong?

Ladies, whatever they tell you , the post office lies!! I called in advance a month ago EVERY NYC post office to figure out who gave a #%@ * about hand canceling and I found a real sweetheart (name withheld, not that she deserves it) at the Radio City post office who said she would personally hand-cancel up to 50 for free. So I took time off work, at great inconvenience and went to the station, where she personally greeted me with a big (fake) smile, and took my bag of precious engraved hand-calligraphed invites, which included (little did she know) one addressed to FH and me as a keepsake. NEXT DAY - RECEIVED IT WITH BIG UGLY “HAPPY HOLIDAYS” MACHINE CANCELATION!!! Ugh. Why did she even have to lie to me, like I have nothing better to do? I called and asked her if there was any problem with the hand canceling, and she said no. I told her the one we received was machine canceled. She’s blaming it on someone else. WHAT GIVES?? Anyway, ladies, please spare yourself the trouble, or have them mailed from another town; NYC does not care, as usual.

in Chicago, i had large problems with hand cancelling. When I took them to my local, urban, post office they weren’t interested in hand cancelling at all. they told me it would cost an additional 17 cents, and that then they’d be sent to a distribution office where it would be “considered” I asked if it was “questionable” and the guy just said they “dont do it”

I don’t know how much of a bother it will be that there is ink and a bar code on my mail. but it would have almost been better to drop them in a mailbox. We’ll see! hopefully my guests will still come even though their mail has streaks on it

Ours were Seal n Send w/o invitations, so hopefully they’ll be all right!

I brought my beautiful vintage-stamped bridal shower invitations to the post office to be “hand-canceled” so that they would look extra pretty, and the lady told me that she doesn’t hand-cancel, so the envelopes would have to be sent to the main post office branch of our county to be hand-cancelled. She put them in a box, and I went home. Well…….when I opened my mailbox two days later (of course I sent myself one for my scrapbook), I was horrified. The post office hadn’t hand-canceled my envelopes with a traditional circle-shaped stamp, instead, there was black marker scribbled all over my beautiful vintage stamps!!!!!!! You can hardly see the stamps!!! Apparently, that’s how our county hand-cancels. I cannot tell you how outraged I was. I went to the post office to complain. Fellow brides, my advice to you is…if you want something done correctly, you have to do it yourself. Ask for the stamper, and do it yourself right there at the post office. This is how I intend to do my wedding invitations.