The whole wedding invitation selection/design process is extremely confusing. As it should be - because it's not likely that you shop for them on a regular basis, right? And with so many sites offering letterpress these days, it's hard to know the difference.
Well, you're in the right place. We chose the two most popular online wedding invitation vendors out there, Minted and Wedding Paper Divas, and compared their letterpress quality with ours.
Standard Papers
People tend to gravitate towards the design first and leave paper quality as an afterthought. While we love design and think it's super important, we actually think the paper is equally important; an invitation's beauty is ~50% visual, 50% tactile. A beautiful invitation design tends to fall flat on a bad canvas.
Our standard (with foil edging upgrade) vs. Minted Standard
Our ulrathick (with foil edging upgrade) vs. Wedding Paper Divas Signature Premiere White
Our ultrathick (with foil edging upgrade) vs. Wedding Paper Divas Luxe Cotton White
Standard Paper's Impression Depth
Letterpress invitations are coveted for their tactile quality. If the impressions are barely making a dent in the paper, you might as well be printing digitally. Paper quality makes all the difference here - the spongier and thicker the paper, the deeper the impressions.
These textures are hard to capture on camera, but we hope you can get an idea. Overall, Minted Standard's and WPD Luxe Cotton White's impressions were present though subtle. WPD Signature Premiere White's impressions were virtually nonexistent.
Our standard impressions vs. Minted Standard impressions
Our standard impressions vs. Wedding Paper Divas Signature Premiere White impressions
Upgraded Paper
Both Minted and WPD offer thicker paper at an additional cost. WPD's thicker paper is definitely thick. However, it is more cardboard-like than soft/rich and gives medium impressions. Their paper shade is also a bit more on the cold/fluorescent side. (We haven't gotten my hands on Minted's thicker paper yet, but will update as soon as we do!)
Our standard (with foil edging upgrade) vs. Wedding Paper Divas Ultra Luxe Cotton White
Upgraded Paper's Impression Depth
Our standard impressions
Wedding Paper Divas Ultra Luxe Cotton White impressions
From as objective of a stance that we could possibly have, here's what we feel is the "low-down" of all three invitation vendors: Minted and Wedding Paper Divas both have an extremely broad selection and have live, on-site customization tools where you can see how color/font changes look on a suite even before you get the digital proof, which is definitely cool. WPD carries the cheapest letterpress invitations we have seen, but they are also the worst letterpress quality we have ever seen (at $2.99 for their Signature Premiere White, you get a barely-there impression that's printed crooked on some flimsy paper). Minted loves to make their paper sound absolutely amazing in their descriptions, but their paper is actually pretty average by all calculable measures. For Eliza Tran, it unfortunately isn't possible to mess around with different colors/fonts live on our site.
In conclusion: It's like going to Subway (Minted/WPD) for a meatball sandwich versus going to an Italian deli (us). Go for Minted/WPD if having hundreds of options readily and quickly available is the most important thing to you. Their inventory is vast and processing time is around 5 business days quicker. Go for Eliza Tran if you're looking for significantly better quality at similar or better prices. Definitely go for us if you're looking for some serious letterpress. Our inventory is tightly curated and we work with true old-fashioned letterpress artisans.