A complete guide to printing your designs beautifully
Your Evorrah designs are delivered print-ready and wait in your client portal, one PDF per piece. Send the PDF exactly as received — do not resize, re-export, or adjust colours, and do not let a print shop “fix” it for you without telling you what they changed. If a printer asks for a native file, they have misunderstood: a print-ready PDF is the native file.
Send these files to a specialty stationery printer. The quantity column is the part to read twice: these pieces do not all count the same way, and a single number applied to every row is how people order ten times more table numbers than they have tables.
| Piece | Print specifications | How many |
|---|---|---|
| Invitation | PDF · CMYK · 5×7″ · 0.125″ bleed | One per householdcount the envelopes you will post, not the guests — a couple at one address is one |
| Save the Date | PDF · CMYK · 5×7″ · 0.125″ bleed | One per householdcount the envelopes you will post, not the guests — a couple at one address is one |
| Menu Card | PDF · CMYK · 4×9″ · 0.125″ bleed | 132120 guests + 12 spare for proofs and mistakes |
| Place Cards | PDF · CMYK · 2×3.5″ folded · 0.125″ bleed | 132120 guests + 12 spare for proofs and mistakes |
| Table Numbers | PDF · CMYK · 5×7″ · 0.125″ bleed | 1412 tables + 2 spare for proofs and mistakes |
| Order of Service | PDF · CMYK · A5 Folded (5.83×8.27″) · 0.125″ bleed | 132120 guests + 12 spare for proofs and mistakes |
| Itinerary Card | PDF · CMYK · 4×9″ · 0.125″ bleed | One per householdcount the envelopes you will post, not the guests — a couple at one address is one |
| Envelope | PDF · CMYK · A7 Envelope (5.25×7.25″) | One per householdcount the envelopes you will post, not the guests — a couple at one address is one |
These are the materials you chose in your briefing. Every one of them changes what your printer has to do, what it costs, and how long it takes — so this is the part to read aloud to them.
Made from cotton fibre rather than wood pulp — thick, soft, faintly furry at the edge. The traditional stock for letterpress and engraving because it takes an impression deeply.
Watch for — Never let anyone laminate cotton rag. Lamination seals the surface and flattens the impression you are paying for.
The design is cut into a metal die, filled with ink, and pressed so the ink stands up off the sheet. The sharpest and most formal method there is — you can feel the raised type, and see its bruise on the reverse.
What it needs first — A hand-cut die per piece, per colour. Dies are the largest single line on an engraved quote and the slowest thing to make.
Watch for — Very few shops still engrave. Ask for engraving by name and confirm they do it in-house — thermography imitates the raised feel for a fraction of the price and is a different product, not a substitute.
Counted backwards from your event. These use typical trade turnarounds for Engraving — they are a plan to check against your printer, not a promise from one. The only date here that cannot move is the last.
| What | By when | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your files reach you | August 28, 2026 | from the studio |
| Place the print order | July 29, 2026 | safely — August 26, 2026 is the last date that still works at the fast end of production |
| Approve your proof | August 15, 2026 | allow 10 days for a physical proof to reach you and go back |
| Pieces in your hands | October 10, 2026 | a week before, never the day before |
| Your event | October 17, 2026 | — |
Send this to your print shop by email, or read it out in person. It contains everything a shop needs to quote without a second exchange.
“Hi, I have print-ready PDFs from my designer at Evorrah — CMYK, 300 DPI, 0.125″ bleed, colour profile GRACoL2013 (CRPC6). I would like them printed on Cotton Rag, engraving. Finishing: Wax seal, Gold edge gilding, Tissue interleaving. Quantities: Menu Card ×132, Place Cards ×132, Table Numbers ×14, Order of Service ×132. Invitation, Save the Date, Itinerary Card and Envelope are one per household — I will confirm the exact envelope count. Please send me a physical proof on the actual stock before starting the full run. I need the finished pieces by August 28, 2026. Please confirm paper availability, the setup or die charges, and your turnaround before proceeding. Thank you.”
A proof is not a formality and it is not a preview — it is the last moment the job is still free to change. Check these six things, in this order, in daylight rather than under a lamp.
A calligrapher addresses each envelope by hand, in ink, from your guest list. This is a separate booking from your printer and it happens AFTER the envelopes are printed and BEFORE they are stuffed, so it sits in the middle of your schedule rather than at the end of it.
Seating charts, welcome signs and signage go to a large-format printer — a shop like FedEx Office, Staples, or a local sign and display printer. This is a separate order from your stationery, usually a few days rather than a few weeks, and it is the one part of your suite you should NOT hand to the stationery shop. Large-format shops supply their own board or paper: send the print-ready PDF and specify the dimensions.
| Piece | Print specifications | How many |
|---|---|---|
| Seating Chart | PDF · CMYK · 24×36″ · 0.125″ bleed | 1a single display piece — no spare margin applies |
“Hi, I have print-ready PDFs at 300 DPI, CMYK with 0.125″ bleed. I need the following large-format pieces printed: Seating Chart. Please advise on your available board options and mounting, confirm the exact print dimensions, and send me a digital proof before the full run. I need the pieces by August 28, 2026. Thank you.”
Wax seals are not produced by a print shop and no printer will quote for them. You need a wax-seal artisan or specialty supplier — search Etsy for custom wax seal makers, or use a dedicated wax studio. The studio delivers the artwork; the vendor either cuts a brass stamp from it or produces ready-made seals with your design on an adhesive backing.
Two practical points nobody mentions until it is late: ready-made adhesive seals survive the post, hand-poured seals on a sealed envelope often do not — if the seals must travel, ask for adhesive-backed. And if the invitation is engraved or letterpressed, order the seals early enough to test one on the real envelope before the whole run is stuffed.
“Hi, I have a custom wax seal design file from my designer (1.25″ diameter, high-res PNG and vector PDF). I need wax seals produced in a colour that matches my event palette — I’ll send you the hex codes. Please confirm available wax colours, minimum order quantity, per-unit price, whether they are adhesive-backed, and production time. I need them by August 28, 2026. Thank you.”
One piece in your suite is digital and needs no print shop — Custom Monogram. It waits in your client portal to download and share.
A commercial printer and a stationery printer are different trades. The shop that prints your business cards well will not necessarily letterpress a cotton sheet well, and asking the wrong shop produces a cheap quote and a disappointing object.
Photograph them before they are posted — flat, from directly above, in morning light near a window, and close enough to read the paper. Foil, emboss and grain only exist in macro, and once the invitations are in the post the whole set is never in one place again. If you post them anywhere, tag @evorrah and we will reshare.