USPS hand cancel rate

I had mine hand cancelled. I didn't pay extra for it.

I have heard a lot of stories about people paying extra to hand cancel invites and then they weren't hand cancelled after all. I probably won't bother.

My post office didn't do this, but i have heard of other that requested it but they still sent them through the machines.

Honestly? I wouldn't worry too much about it unless you have breakable decor on the invite. I get 100 invites a year, at least, and I never even look at the envelope.

I didn't have mines hand cancelled and they arrived in one piece. I honestly wouldn't be concerned about it.

I'm going to ask, but if they say no or charge more than $10-15 for it I'll pass. My envelopes are going to be dark blue so you'd barely be able to see the bar code anyway.

We had ours hand-cancelled, for free. We did call the post office ahead of time to find out the best time to bring them in. Not all offices will do it so you may need to call around.

We hand canceled out and they still went through a machine that put a big, ugly black mark on them.

So after reading this, I was curious and called my local post office. I was told they will happily hand cancel them but she couldn't guarentee me they won't be sent through a machine since everything is basically now automated. Is there more than one machine that the envelopes go through at the post office?

It's definitely not necessary. But we did it, in part so we could get the cute "Bridal Veil" (Oregon) postmark. We bought the postage from them ahead of time, stamped all the envelopes, and boxed them all up to go to the Bridal Veil Post Office. If you have more than 50 invitations, there is a processing fee of 5 cents for each invitation over 50. They hand cancel with a postmark that is either hearts or doves (your choice), and will send out on a particular date if you ask. The procedure is described at this link:

http://sites.google.com/site/2dbride/paper#TOC-Stamps-and-Postmarks---Bridal-Veil-OR-Post-Office

Below is a photo of the postmark exactly as it arrived. As you can see, there are no ugly black marks on it.

2d Bride that's adorable! We were already planning a drive down to Pendleton to get soil for our tree planting ceremony, so maybe we can align that with when we mail our invites & go to Bridal Veil too!

Thanks for all the info ladies.

I got my STDs hand canceled and I'm going to try to do the same for my invites. It was free. I was told to come at a time when they weren't busy, and I think it depends who you get. I was turned down at first but then the (nicer) postal worker at the next window over whispered to me to give them to her and she will do them. So if someone tells you no, try someone else or at a different post office. But also, like others said its not a big deal and not something you need to have done.

I did it. We went to 3 different post offices and got 3 different answers on whether or not they would do it and whether or not there was a charge...and what that charge was. Basically, there's no consistency and you're mostly at the mercy of the particular postal worker's mood that happens to be there at the time. It was incredibly frustrating. They will absolutely still go through some sort of machine though. We ended up having incorrect addresses on 2 invites and they came back to us...they were obviously machined. And we paid alot of extra postage due to them not really being flexible that was supposed to make them "non-machinable." It was irritating, but I finally made myself stop caring about it because it was just stressing me out too much. The postal service is terrible.

FH did ours tab the post office. The lady wouldn't do it for home. She just handed over the stamp.

As much as I love the idea, I don't think it's worth the hassle for us. I have never saved the envelope an invitation came it. I have never looked at one and noticed that it did or did not get hand cancelled. They have to be sorted anyway, ours won't have any embellishments, so I'm not bothering.

Until this thread I didn't even know what hand cancel meant.

My post office does it for free, so we are doing it. If it's free its for me!

I had my hand cancelled, they arrived beautifully, and I did not pay extra.

Even if they're hand cancelled on the top, they still run the bottom of the envelopes through the scanner, so you do get a barcode on the bottom. It's still significantly prettier, but it's not what people think.