Reaves Engraving

Reaves Engraving

November 29th, 2006 @ 2:37 pm by Mrs. Raspberry
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A client I’m working with is looking for a calligrapher who does beautiful work. (Miss Orange did a great post on calligraphy awhile back.) But because her invitations will be mailed in a box, we need someone who can do the address and return address on a 3″x7″ piece of paper and still make it look nice. She recently came across Reaves Engraving.

Reaves Engraving : wedding stationery Calligraphyinsideenvelope calligraphyinsideenvelope.jpg

They do all of their calligraphy by machine, but still use a calligraphy pen. Their service is fast and they sent us both sample packages for free within a week.

Their prices are as follows:

Calligraphy on inside and outer envelopes is $1.00. For just the outer envelope it’s $.80 (both of these include the tissue and stuffing everything into the envelopes)
If you want, they will put the postage on the response envelope for $.45 (includes stamp)
There is a surcharge of $.25 an envelope if you don’t purchase the envelopes from them, but they also print wedding invitations.

So now our debate is whether getting them done by machine is cheesy or a good way to save just a little and still have them be formal. What do you think? Are you having your wedding invitations calligraphered?

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10 Responses to “Reaves Engraving”

Bee

Mrs. Bee (message) 3,235 posts, Sugar bee

Miss orange just did a post yesterday and she got her invites calligraphered for only $1 each. that’s actually cheaper than reaves engraving with the 25cent surcharge.

we did computer calligraphy, and it turned out beautifully. sure if we could have i would have wanted hand calligraphy, but it’s definitely a place you can cut corners. i think they’ll look nice especially since they’re presented in a box.

11/29/06 @ 2:48 pm (reply)

Guest

NYCJane

I used Reaves Engraving, and I canNOT recommend them highly enough. Cheap, GORGEOUS, and it looks like it was hand done. The customer service is amazing. By far the best decision of our wedding experience was choosing to have our invitations calligraphied by Reaves. Seriously.

I feel so strongly about this that I figured out how to post on wedding bee just to write this.

11/29/06 @ 2:50 pm (reply)

Guest

I would probably just do it myself with a laser printer in this case. In my opinion, the point of having them done by hand is that the calligrapher will choose letter embellishments based on the whole word. The machine calligraphy seems to use a font style code just like a computer does.

11/29/06 @ 2:53 pm (reply)

Guest

we are not using calligraphy or hand writing; fi and i both have terrible handwriting (and i am a little dyslexic). instead, we are making labels based on a weddingbee post!
http://www.weddingbee.com/2006/07/12/label-magic/

etiquette dictates that invitations must be handwritten or calligraphed, but i would prefer that they be easily read by both postal employees and the intended recipient.

11/29/06 @ 3:09 pm (reply)

Guest

NYCJane

CS — I don’t know about the individual letter embellishments, but Reaves gives you a choice of styles, and it looks gorgeous and very formal and traditional. I also recommend their invitations — made from the same paper Crane’s uses (same weight, same tissue, same font styles, same options [thermography vs. engraving], same color, same mill), but without the watermark. Dead ringer for Crane’s, and beautiful calligraphy.

11/29/06 @ 3:12 pm (reply)

Guest

Style Graduate

I like that you get the liquid ink, straight from a calligraphy tip, but without the potential for errors a human calligrapher introduces. It also seems to be cheaper. But I would probably stick with a laser printer, like CS.

11/29/06 @ 4:27 pm (reply)

Guest

i like this idea..but i dont think we have a cushion in the budget that will allow us to opt for calligraphy now..but..it looks very pretty~

11/29/06 @ 4:53 pm (reply)

Guest

Tea

does etiquette REALLY dictate that invites be handwritten or calligraphed? why?

11/29/06 @ 5:09 pm (reply)

Guest

sky2

I think the etiquette rule that invitation addresses be handwritten exists because it is much more personal to address them by hand(also, it helps the recipients tell it is not junk mail…). I don’t think that any rule says they should be calligraphed; that’s a fairly recent trend.

11/29/06 @ 7:39 pm (reply)

10.

Guest

OscarQ

We haven’t decided yet but they’ll either be printed on our printer or sent to a calligrapher for machine calligraphy. I had this done for my sister’s wedding a few years ago and it was great. We used toadscalligraphy.com - they seem to not be accepting new customers at the moment but it wouldn’t hurt to check back in a few weeks.

I think it was about $1.00 per envelope.

11/30/06 @ 1:10 pm (reply)