How to Hand-Cancel Your Wedding Invitations

A little-known fact about mail (until you have to send 100 wedding invitations): Every envelope sent through the mail with a postage stamp on it gets "canceled." While this is nothing to worry about with everyday letters, bills or postcards, you should give it a little extra thought when it comes to mailing your wedding invitations. Depending on the shape and size of your invites, the typical canceling process might not be your best option. Similarly, if your outer envelopes are embellished with ribbon, twine or wax seals, canceling won't be as straightforward as your usual mail. If that's the case for your wedding invitations, you need to know about hand-canceling. Find out exactly what it is and how to get it done below.

What Is Hand-Canceling?

First things first, let's talk about canceling in general. Basically, the post office ensures the stamp you put on the envelope can't be reused again by stamping over it. Typically, this is done by a machine, and unless you specifically request your wedding invitations to be hand-canceled, they'll be processed and stamped by a machine too. By requesting your invitations to be hand-canceled at the post office, you avoid the risk of tearing, smudging or otherwise damaging them. Hand-canceling is exactly what it sounds like: Instead of a machine sorting through all of your mail, each envelope is canceled by hand with an ink stamp.

How to Hand-Cancel Your Wedding Invitations

The first thing to know about having your wedding invitations hand-canceled is that you have to ask for it. The post office won't take responsibility for your carefully calligraphed envelopes, satin ribbons or wax seals getting damaged through the usual machine-canceling process. It's up to you to request canceling by hand for all of your invitations.

Step 1: Double-Check the Postage

This might sound tedious, but if you don't check your stamps, you could end up dealing with returned invites due to insufficient postage. Avoid that mess and take the time to go to the post office and weigh a complete invitation set so you know exactly how much postage each one requires.

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Luxury wedding invitation designer Ceci Johnson of Ceci New York always advises her couples to confirm the postage a day or two before mailing. "There's nothing worse than getting a returned invitation due to a lack of postage," she says. Play it extra-safe and take a note from founder and creative director of Regas Studio Meredith Kurosko: For any mailings that her team takes care of, they add slightly more postage than they're quoted to each invitation to ensure it's covered.

Step 2: Organize, Organize, Organize

Devise a strategy for organizing your invites. We can't stress this enough, and the pros agree. There are a few ways to do it. You could organize your invites into piles by family and state (if you have a lot of out-of-towners), alphabetically or in order of your guest list. Whatever makes the most sense to you and works for your guest list. One idea from Johnson's team: Assemble invites into clear plastic bags in groups of 10. That will make it easier for you to count the number of invites you're mailing out (and make sure no one was forgotten).

Step 3: Make an International Plan

As for international invitations, those should go into separate bags with clearly distinguishable labels. "Fill out customs documents for your international guests before you approach a teller," Johnson says. "It will make your experience that much more pleasant and speedy." Confirm postage for different countries individually.

Step 4: Know Your Post Office Policy

Put a big star next to this tip because depending on where you live, your post office will have a different policy for hand-canceling. Some won't charge you at all and others will. Most post offices won't charge for the first 25 to 50 invitations. The next invites are usually somewhere between 5 and 25 cents apiece. Check to make sure you know what their policies are so you're not hit with an unexpected fee.

Step 5: Hand Them Off

Now you're really there. All you have to do is give the invites to the teller at the post office for them to be hand-canceled. Kurosko suggests taking invitations first thing in the morning to avoid the lunch crowd. And trust us, the moment you pass off your invites, you're going to be excited. This is happening!

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