4.6 out of 5.0
Quality of Service:
4.0 out of 5.0
Professionalism:
4.5 out of 5.0
Flexibility:
5.0 out of 5.0
Responsiveness:
4.5 out of 5.0
Value for Cost:
5.0 out of 5.0
Let me be honest – I thought worrying about wedding invitations was a waste of time. If you were close enough to me and my wife that you were getting invited, you already knew through personal contact, phone, e-mail or word of mouth from our parents when, where, and how the wedding was taking place. Formality aside, we’re not traditionalists and we didn’t even send out save-the-dates in paper form in an effort to be environmentally conscious. Still, we knew we had to do this, mostly for our older guests and to please our parents. Of all things, invitations ended up causing the biggest fights (even moreso than guest list)
Taking all that into consideration, we ended up visiting at least three local paper/stationery shops, looking through every book, Vera Wang, Kate Spade, Checkerboard, Modern Stationery, etc there was to see. Nothing grabbed us except for some extraordinarily expensive options. We couldn’t stomach spending that kind of money on something we didn’t care much about, so that’s when we turned to the web.
After getting samples from Magnet Street and WeddingPaperDivas.com we realized Jean M is in a class of its own. The cardstock is just the right weight and sheen, and the printing is sharp, accurate and near indistinguishable from the local stores. The difference is it’s half the price. PLUS, they offer discounts and promo codes. And, the advantage of cutting out the middleman means the order is shipped right to you. You also can design your own cards with their free online tools. The template software is really good for detail-oriented folks like myself. But it’s not as customizable as you may need – for example, we wanted our names sized differently to stand out and adjusting spacing or right/left justifications was impossible online. It works well for simple or standard cards, but otherwise you’ll need to call for final formatting, as I did. One of the other things I liked a lot was their online chat, where representatives could answer questions until midnight EST.
The winner in all this for us was that we found a card style that was better-looking and fit our style more than anything in a book at a stationery store. It was a custom-design with two paper layers and two ribbon layers, and had to be hand-assembled at Jean M. That would cost an arm and a leg in the real world. But at Jean M it was a few hundred dollars! We are STILL getting compliments on our invitation.
The reason I docked them a star in the rating is that they screwed up the order on the text font for the outside envelopes. We paid for digital calligraphy and they used the wrong font. This, in the grand scheme of things, is minor…. but does indicate a lapse in oversight, since the font was clearly listed on the order form. To their credit, they admitted the error and refunded the cost of the calligraphy (or were willing to rush out the corrected order) For the invitations themselves, we had to go through a couple rounds of proofs and revisions to clear up typos and mistakes on their part – so again, be mindful and plan for a little extra time. It’s $15 per proof, which I found to be obnoxious since I couldn’t understand why I had to pay when they were the ones making mistakes – but they waived it when I complained. I have to echo many other reviewer’s comments here – GET PROOFS! It will save you a lot of hassle and delays. In the end though, the quality of the stationery is worth the effort and cost savings.