DIY Option: An In-Depth Look (Lots Of Info, So A Bit Of Scrolling)
Generally speaking, most of our DIY couples are trying out letterpress for the first time, so no worries if it’s all new to you! It’s surprisingly easy once we get you going. We’re nearby in the studio throughout for any hand-holding and troubleshooting you may need, but we encourage you to make a fun day of it and you’re welcome to bring music, champagne, snacks, etc. We’ve also had full wedding parties and bachelor/bachelorette parties join us for printing sessions, so we can work with you if that’s something you had in mind.
With a caveat that this can vary quite a bit depending on your design and any extras you’d like (die cuts, lined envelopes, wax seals, etc), the “30,000 foot” view of the process is as follows:
Step 1: We meet with you to discuss your design ideas, allow you to feel different paper options and see a catalogue of past jobs for inspiration, show you a bit about how the process works, etc. Ideally we’d do this in our studio in Charlestown so you can see the presses and explore the paper options in person, but we can also do a version of this over Zoom, if that’s easier for you.
Step 2: We provide you with an estimate based on the specifics of your job, alongside our terms of service. We require a 50% deposit prior to ordering custom materials such as printing plates or papers.
Step 3: We work on your design (unless you’ll be providing one). Once a proof is signed off on, we’ll order the polymer printing plates you’ll use to print each piece of the suite. The plate production and shipping back to us typically takes 3-4 days. At the same time we’ll order your paper and envelopes to have on hand (unless you choose to provide your own supplies, which is always your option.)
Step 4: We schedule a date for you to come in and print. This is determined by a combination of your availability, staff availability and press availability.
Step 5: You make letterpress magic 🙂
Step 6: You’ll need to return the following day (or anytime thereafter) to trim your invites to their finished size, as we recommend allowing the ink to dry overnight before doing so. This usually takes under a half-hour and you are not billed for this time. If you’d like to use our studio as an assembly space for your invite suites, we can arrange a small charge for that time/space.
Ideally, we tell clients to allow 6-8 weeks for the process in full. We do have a rush option of 2-3 weeks, which includes a 30% surcharge to rush order the shipped materials and bump aside previously-scheduled production runs.
Budgeting
As for budget, we fully realize how frustrating it is during the planning process to hear “well, it depends,” but sadly, in this case, it really, really does. We can give you a detailed estimate once we have a few specifics in place, but in the meantime, we can offer a bit of generic info that can help impart some knowledge of the pricing factors.
Letterpress is very time-intensive and that, plus your paper choices, will have the biggest impact on your budget. The heavier the paper (or handmade versus machine-made), the more expensive, for example. With printing time, each color requires a separate print run, so the more colors in your design, the more labor is involved. In the case of DIY, you’ll be doing that labor yourselves, so it will affect you pricewise only in the sense that each color will add to the amount of studio rental time you’ll need.
If you have a single-color design, and are printing 100 invites, 100 RSVP cards and 100 return addresses on envelopes, this will likely take 4-5 hours. Additional color runs would require cleaning the press, mixing new ink and resetting your press bed, so factor in roughly 90 minutes for each additional color you add. You can rent our studio by the half-day (5-hour block) for $450 and add additional hours at $120 per hour. This is a guided rental that includes having a Reflex employee on hand to help assist anywhere needed.
If you were to go with a standard 110lb letterpress paper (and including the polymer printing plates you’ll need produced), you can estimate roughly $300-$350 in supplies for that sample invite suite of (100) 5X7 invites, 3X5 RSVP cards and coordinating A7 envelopes.
But that’s just the bare bones of what is a really fun and exciting artistic process. Please feel free to reach out and schedule a time to come in and see wedding suite samples, paper options, ink swatches, the studio and the machines that make the magic happen!