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Envelopes are just paper, right?

July 25th, 2007 at 06:06 am

Then how come they are so darned expensive? First a little back story...

I bought the gray cardstock to make my invitations today from Office Max, and it only cost $12.97 for 250 sheets. That will be enough to make all the invitations as well as all the RSVP cards I'll send, and the maps I'll probably just use plain white paper.

Office Max also said that it would cost $.16 a sheet for them to print black and white, and $1 something a sheet for them to print color, but only $1 to cut the whole ream of paper. So, I think I am going to print them and take them in and have them cut.

I had already made a sample of the invitation, with vellum on top, card stock on bottom. They are going to be tied with ribbon. I had figured just print two on one sheet and then cut down the middle to get 8.5" x 5.5" invitations, and then find the right envelopes. Good thing I looked first!

I want to have two envelopes, one inside the other, and the only sizes similar to that I could find were 6.13" x 8.38" for the inner envelope, 6.38" x 8.63" for the outer envelope, so I would have to cut them twice anyway. And I wanted gray. Holy cow, it is hard to find gray envelopes! And, these particular ones come in 100 envelope boxes, so I would have had to buy 3 of each. The larger ones were $56.39 for 100, the smaller ones were $51.59. Grand total: $323.94. EEK!

Ok, looked around some more, and couldn't find anything cheaper for these sizes. And, any other rectangular sizes didn't quite fit into each other nicely.

So, I thought of square envelopes. I found 5.5" x 5.5" ones, 50 in each, 5 packs, for $11.80 each, and 6" x 6" ones, 50 in each, 5 packs, for $13.80 each, for a grand total of $128! That is a savings of $195!!!

I checked the usps.gov site, and standard letter postage rates apply to envelopes that are a maximum height of 6 1/8" and a minimum length of 5", so I am good there. Standard rates apply.

So, now all I have to do is change the invitations to be square. Good thing I thought of the envelopes before I started printing them all out!

I also went to Hancock Fabrics and bought some more blue ribbon for $.77 and 10 yards of white ribbon for $.65 for a total of $7.80 with tax.

2 Responses to “Envelopes are just paper, right?”

  1. cptacek Says:
    1185340625

    Ordered the two sets of envelopes. Shipping of $9.85, for a total of $137.85.

    I also looked a little more on the USPS web site, and square envelopes are specifically called out below the minimum / maximum dimensions chart and will have a $.17 charge on top of the $.41. But, still worth it, I think.

  2. disneysteve Says:
    1185378970

    Have you checked these places?

    http://www.xpedxstores.com/

    http://www.pickquickpapers.com/

    They have far, far better paper and envelope selections than places like Office Max and Staples.

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