Wedding Blog

…did you hear me? I’m officially breaking up with you.”

That’s how I feel about my relationship with printers.

I’ve had a lot of experience with printers and print shops because my work relies on them, but they’re often inconsistent with colors, quality, printing and everything else.

After I finished the design of my invitation, checked for typos, and carefully verified all the colors (using a Pantone chart), I went to various printers for quotes. The print shop I chose was one I dealt with when I was in design school… and since I knew them, I was sure they were going to do a good job. I brought in my artwork on a Monday morning and asked them if they’d be ready by Friday (I absolutely wanted to mail them out that weekend). The lady at the front desk said it wouldn’t be a problem, and told me she would contact me to verify the proofs.

Wednesday came and I picked up the phone and called to see what was going on. She told me that the proofs weren’t ready yet, but reassured me and said, “even if you approve the proofs on Thursday, they’ll still be ready on Friday.”

Thursday came and again I called the lady. “I apologize, the proofs won’t be ready in time, our printer broke.”

It was now Friday and I was hoping they had fixed whatever issue they had with their printer. I called again and she told me, “I’m so sorry, we have the technician on site, but I won’t be able to show you the proofs today. But Monday for sure! Is noon okay?”

Being the nice girl that I am, I said, “Sure, what other choice do I have?” I was angry all weekend long because I couldn’t send out my invitations. On a good note, I took the opportunity to address all of the envelopes (at least that went well), so now I just have to put the invites in the envelopes and voila… off to the post office.

Before I left work at noon on Monday to stop by the print shop, I decided to call just in case. Luckily I did, because the proofs weren’t ready yet. The lady told me to come after work, and I did.  I got there and everything looked nice, until I turned the cards over. I had created the background in Photoshop and the rest of the card in Illustrator, and even though it was the same color (pantone CMYK equivalent), the colors looked completely different.

I was so angry, but I was already late and did I really want to redo the colors and go through this whole story all over again? Not really… so I printed them as is. Honestly, I don’t think anyone will notice, but it’s so frustrating to pay for something that isn’t right!

I went to pick up my invites on Tuesday… and guess what? It didn’t happen. They had a problem with the printer again! At this point I was used to it, I didn’t care anymore. On Wednesday - 8 days after I sent my invitations to print - I finally got them. Come time to pay for the bill, they didn’t even offer a discount or anything despite all the issues. I didn’t want to start fighting so I paid and left. I was so happy that was over with.

When I got home and started to assemble everything, I realized that they had screwed up the quantities!!! I’m not kidding you. I had three elements to my invitation set: the invitation, RSVP and accommodation cards. The quantities were 55 in French, 25 in English. Well they only printed 40 accommodation cards. I was in disbelief. Let me just say that some of our guests didn’t get any accommodation cards. There was no way I was going back there to get more printed - no way!

For those who designed their own invitations, did you have any issues? Anyone else want to call it quits with their printer?