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Monday, June 23rd
Fine Stationery began in 2000 in a family garage with just one employee. The founder, Maggie Swanson, was 9 months pregnant with her third baby and came up with the idea for Fine Stationery when the thought of dragging her children to the stationery store to buy birth announcements filled her with dread. She decided to take to the internet to provide people with convenient options for all types of personalized invitations and announcements. The company has continued to grow since then and now offers well-known brands like Crane & Co., William Arthur, and Boatman Gellar.
Fewer choices than expected
Fine Stationery has a selection of business stationery, seasonal greeting cards, party invitations, and announcements for all of life's important events. We were a bit surprised to find that their wedding invitation inventory only consists of 52 choices in total. When we've seen companies that offer hundreds and thousands of customizable designs, 52 just doesn't seem very impressive. You can choose between romantic, vintage, modern, or floral sub-categories when you start your shopping journey here.
Not our favorite designs
Everyone has different preferences, so we can't speak for every happy couple here, but the styles we found at Fine Stationery weren't anything we were excited about. They were either really bright and bold, which may be over-the-top for some, or so subtle that they bored us to look at. We wouldn't be surprised if customers quickly browsed through all the choices here and moved on because nothing really fit their theme.
Limited customizations
The design process is very basic when you're adding your information to a template at Fine Stationery. You can't edit the design or add photos, but you can just change out the text to fit your wedding details. The customization here is really limited, so unless you really love one of the templates, we'd shop somewhere else because you won't be able to change much about the wedding invites you see.
Not the cheapest option
If you sign up for emails from Fine Stationery, they'll send you a 20% off code on your next order. However, at the time of this review, they were also running a sitewide sale where you could get 20% off any order with their provided discount code. So rather than having to sign up for emails, we were able to get the deal anyway. The least expensive wedding invitations here cost $1.31. We've seen cheaper prices at other places, especially when you consider that the prices shown here reflect the lowest possible prices. That means you'll only pay that much if you order around 500 invitations. The less you order, the more you'll pay per invitation.
Higher shipping prices with bigger orders
If you visit Fine Stationery's shipping page, you can quickly identify how much you'll be paying for your invitations. Ground shipping starts at $8.99 for orders between $0 and $24 and then goes up from there. Some companies offer free shipping if you spend a certain amount at their store, but the more you spend with Fine Stationery, the more expensive your delivery will be. Many invitations show a delivery window of 10-13 days, but you could pay more for 1- to 3-day shipping if your product qualifies and you're in a rush.
Reprints with a 25% discount
Since most everything is considered customized and personalized at Fine Stationery, you can't return your order after it has been placed. If you made a mistake with the information in your wedding invitations, you can order a reprint with a 25% discount. If you happen to order something that's not customized, Fine Stationery has a 30-day return policy. They say they guarantee all their orders though, so if you're unsatisfied, they ask that you contact them. This isn't reassuring to us, since it seems pretty vague, but if you were to run into an issue, you should absolutely try contacting customer service by email and phone until you get an adequate response.
Poor reviews
We wish we were able to find out more information about Fine Stationery like what rating they would earn from the Better Business Bureau, but unfortunately they don't have a profile with the BBB. They don't have unfiltered customer reviews on their own website, and there are very few third-party reviews about them. The few things we found were all pretty negative and ranted about how slow delivery is, how hard it is to reach customer service, and how poor the quality of the products are. Unfortunately, we really weren't able to find anything that instilled confidence in Fine Stationery.
Skip Fine Stationery
We had a hard time finding reasons to want to shop at Fine Stationery. They have few wedding invitation designs, they're more expensive than some of their competitors, there are no options for free shipping, and their satisfaction guarantee is pretty pathetic. There are so many beautiful wedding invitations out there, so we definitely recommend finding them through a higher-ranked option on our list.
It's an exciting time of life if you're on the search for wedding invitation companies. It's the purchase that kicks off the rest of the important events you're about to experience. Wedding invitations can reach your loved ones all around the globe to invite them to celebrate your special occasion.
The design of an invitation says a lot about the personalities of the happy couple and portrays the vibe of the wedding - low-key and casual or fancy and formal? The invitation says it all. You can have any wedding invitation you dream up with how easy it is to customize them these days.
Many companies allow you to upload your own photos, choose your favorite fonts, select colors and clipart, and adjust the placement of your text to create exactly the look you're going for. You can put your creative skills to work or choose from one of the hundreds of thousands of pre-existing wedding invitation templates where you could easily add your information and have them ready for printing within minutes.
Your wedding invitation will likely include the names of you and your significant other, the date, time, and venue location for the ceremony, how you want people to dress (if applicable) and information on where you're registered (so you can get showered with money and gifts, of course!). It's important to find a company that will quickly print out your invitations so that your guests have plenty of time to get details about your wedding and give you a solid RSVP.
Aside from the wedding invitation alone, some people choose to slip in extra cards to invite certain guests to a luncheon or dinner, reception, or even a bachelor/bachelorette party beforehand. You can choose the envelope design you want to go along with your invitation and if you want the company to print addresses on them for you. You might add a fancy gold stamp to seal the invitations or have them embossed with your names. The sky's the limit when it comes to designing something beautiful that you'll be excited to send to all your friends and family.
We've done a lot of the important research regarding some of the best online companies that do custom wedding invitations. There are a few key details we recommend that you keep in mind when you are shopping around:
The experts at Top Consumer Reviews have researched the most important things you'd want to consider when choosing a company to create and buy your wedding invitations from. We hope this information helps you have an enjoyable time designing wedding invitations that reflect your style and that you'll cherish forever!
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