Transcript:
Hi, everyone, so today. We are looking at invitation samples from a company called wedding paper divas. And if you’ve ever ordered from Shutterfly or tiny prints, you might find the ordering process pretty familiar because they’re all part of the same company. This actually came via UPS ground and it came in a hurry. I ordered these a couple days before Christmas, figuring that they would take time. After the holidays to send me my free samples. And instead, they actually sent them before the holiday, so as busy as they were with other orders, they found time before Christmas to get this out and that was pretty impressive. They didn’t need to do it, but they did so good for them. Um, just to make clear. This is not a sponsored post. I did not get any free product in exchange for a review. I simply ordered these just like any prospective bride would, so it comes a little packaged like this, and there’s a seal at the top. And when you open it, you end up with this folder Full of information, which is great as is normal with any of these companies. When you order samples, you’ll get a coupon. In this case. It’s 20% off your actual invitation order. They give you nine months to place that order. And in the case of wedding paper divas, they also give you a coupon for a friend to use, so that’s nice starting over here on the right. You’ll see paper samples, which is always great. They have a color chart for every single type of paper that they offer and there are five. The first is signature textured. Ecru ecru is a typical term that most stationers will use to mean Cream kind of a butter cream color as opposed to white. And when you get samples, you want to look at how the print comes off in this case? This paper is like a watercolor paper and they must be using some kind of a industrial-strength ink jet because it doesn’t have that tell-tale kind of shiny plasticky look that a laser printer might have, so this looks really good, Good colors, good weight and again, the watercolor finish its 111 pound, then they have the matching white version signature textured, white paper 111 pound. Has that same watercolor Look very nice. The next one is premium double thick, matte paper, and it’s exactly what it promises double thick. Its 240 pound This is made in the USA. It is very white. It’s not a perfect light as compared to some other things, but as compared to the ecru, it’s definitely white again. It doesn’t have that plastic II feel of text. It looks like you’ve used watercolor and the text is pretty clear. So good. Next one is pearl white shimmer paper. This has been very popular for a while with invitation. Companies and it looks good, but it’s extremely thin, so keep that in mind and finally, the signature, matte ecru signature, matte white paper, 120 pound. It’s a little bit thicker than the watercolor, supposedly, but a watercolor actually ends up feeling more substantial. I would use it, but I would probably opt for the double thick mat instead. If you want a very, very sturdy invitation card, if you want something, it’s gonna be easier to fold. Then I would use the signature matte because you can probably get it especially. If you use a bone folder, you can probably get a nice crease on that on the flip side, it shows in the case of these three. What a photograph will look like printed on it, which is really good for Thank-you notes, Save the dates and that sort of thing the watercolor they didn’t. Show us what a photograph looks like, and I’m gonna guess that’s because it probably doesn’t come out looking that great, Usually a watercolor paper will end up giving you a kind of a very dull tone, and the colors won’t pop as much, so they didn’t even try, but on Pearl light, shimmer, premium, double thick mat and signature matte white. All three of those. I think the photos look great. They probably look the best on the pearl white. Just at first glance, if you’re okay With that extra shimmer, you also have to look out on shimmery paper. If you have any spot of white that is blown out on your picture. It’ll look a little funky, so keep that in mind. The premium double thick and the signature matte way both. I think the photos look almost exactly the same. If you want a perfectly clean look, that doesn’t look noisy at all. The double thick is the best, and then the signature matte looks really good, but it definitely has a little bit of a little bit of noise, a little bit of fuzz to it. So if we’re looking for the Christmas print for a photo and sturdiest card and great printing in all colors, premium double thick mat looks like the way to go, so those are our samples. Let’s see if we can get them back in the exact order Next folder over is gonna be our actual samples and then the folder on the Left shows us. Well, actually, it’s not that much information. It just kind of looks pretty of the samples. I ordered six. I received one two three, four good here. So when you order samples, of course, they’re not going to have your name on them. They won’t have your personalized information. They will be samples mostly from fake events. I don’t think they usually put people’s actual addresses and dates and that sort of thing they’ll be Made-up names, but it’s a great way to get your hands on them and see how they look close up. That’s something that I won’t be able to show you perfectly with this video, but I can give you an idea. Let’s do these separately, so we can pick up women one at a time and the first one. It’s very handy on the back. They’ll actually tell you customer number, okay. This one doesn’t tell you the actual design, number or name. I think I guess we’ll call it five, three 300 nine, five. But when you’re looking at the sample, it’s the one with the really pretty a lot of color. It has a nice finish. It’s this isn’t on the watercolor paper. It has a watercolor design, very floral, very timeless. It looks like something you’d see in the 30s but it has a huge drawback, and that’s that when you actually zoom in on the print, it’s terrible. It’s very, very, very faint. Honestly, this part where it says post ranch in and this part with the names it truly looks like. I put it on the most basic setting on my home printer, which was really disappointing because it’s a pretty design. It’s tasteful, it’s elegant, It’s it’s just really beautiful, it’s. A nice throwback and the flowers are printed pretty well. The paper is fantastic, actually, like the little illustration on the back, but the printing is just terrible, so I suppose it depends on how much of a stickler you are for good printing, but this is not it, so put that one aside and move on. This one is five, three three. Oh, well, that appears to be my order number, so it’s not gonna tell you the actual number so that you can go back and look it back up, but I presume. If you go back into your account. If you’ve ordered a sample of something, you’ll be able to look at your order history, and then you won’t have to wade through every single invitation. They have on their website to get back to the one that you actually want to purchase, but this one has again. Watercolor is so big right now. It has a big water color Swatch on it. It’s meant to look like abstract art and it works. The printing is is good again with the background on the response card, also printing his good with the background. The please respond by and the names are printed pretty. Well, but here we go again. These details with invite you to celebrate the wedding on this side, whether you accept and regret that text just looks sloppy to me. I personally am too picky and would probably not choose this because of the actual printing quality, it’s just not up to par for the amount that you’re paying for the invitations so pretty they make a statement. But if you’re picky about your text and how it renders it on the actual page, this doesn’t pass. All right next sample, lets. See if we can get a good one. This is a really interesting idea. Oil is so popular right now. It’s also extremely expensive, so what wedding paper divas has done is come up with a way to fake the foil, so they’re using a photographic image of foil so that from a distance and on their website. It looks like the details in this invitation set are foiled and they’re not. This is just a picture of it and it kind of comes off as looking fake. I like the overall design. I like the geometric pattern. I like the look of it. It looks great from a distance. It looked great on the website, But here we go again when you zoom in on this, and you actually look at the lettering, it’s fuzzy. It’s it’s not rendered in high-res and again. I honestly could probably print it as well or better on my home printer. So that’s distressing and then if you flip it over. I really don’t like the back. They’ve used the fake gold leaf again. The fake foil and it’s just, it’s a busy pattern. It doesn’t really go Vitaliy on the front at all. So I can’t recommend them fun. All right, 0 for 3 at this point, lets. See if we can do better. This one is really cute. I liked the idea of the natural look on the website. It might look like it was printed on some kind of a linen fabric or even some kind of a textured paper. It’s not its regular white paper, and this is a background photo that was used to make it look like it has texture that said it’s well done and it looks good. The the design is cute. It’s very trendy, it’s in right now. I like the white ink. However, again, the printing quality here, especially with the wreath, is not very high-rez. It’s just again. It depends on how picky you are. If you really like this style. I’d say it’s not bad. I don’t dislike it compared to the others, but I would definitely order it. Get a sample and look at it for yourself and see how you feel about the print quality of the wreath. Believe it or not, the print quality of the text on this one is perfect, so it’s kind of like they can’t do everything right at the same time, and in that in this case, they’ve done kind of like, 3/4 right and the back of this. I think is actually pretty nice. It looks better probably than it does. On the screen, it’s just elements from the wreath switched out with colors and made into a pattern on the back. And I’m sure you can probably order it without this pattern on the back. If you would like to keep this blank. So Katherine and Steven, we like this one that one probably gets if I’m grading these with a letter grade. The others all failed and this one probably gets like a C+ or a B. We have two more from wedding paper divas. This one is actually my favorite. It is on the double thick matte paper. It’s very, very, very strong. The back is kind of tacky. I probably wouldn’t have the back printed. I would keep it white, but it’s not as annoying as some of the others, and it actually has really clean edge, which is something to look at. When you’re looking at anything that’s printed with ink all the way to the edge. You want to see whether it’s flaking or not, and I don’t see any flaking in this? The picture looks amazing, of course. If you’re gonna go with this design, you’ll want to find a picture of your own that complements the style. So you need something that has a lot of sty up here or you could probably do something where you had across here picture down here, and then this product was white, but I really like how the sky in this case is faded into the background, and you have perfectly clear text. This was almost like it was done on a different printer. Different press or it was put together with a different program so that they were able to use higher resolution vector base text and it looks great, it’s crisp, It’s clear that black really stands out against the blue sky. The wedding picture is adorable, Probably from their engagement session. The only thing that I don’t like is that it’s super informal. They’ve reduced the date down to just numbers. It’s very, very simple, It doesn’t use parent’s names. It just says together with their families, But if you’re looking for something very simple, clean and modern like that. I would absolutely recommend this, so this one’s getting an A from me. And our final example actually came up a sample envelope and when we open, it included the response cards envelope as well. So that way, you’ll be able to see the type of envelope that they use for everything. Remember, you don’t have to use the envelopes that come with it. You can certainly order envelopes that leave either from your calligrapher Or from a place like cards and pockets calm. They’ll have a zillion different color combinations, and perhaps you could find a navy or a cream or even a black would work with us. Maybe even gold have so many options you don’t have to use white, but white is what you’ll get with your order with wedding paper divas and then you can expand beyond that a few black, so the invitations themselves are fantastic. I’m giving and a as well. This is not blue paper. It’s actually printed with navy blue ink. It’s printed to the edge. There’s a full bleed and yet it’s cut perfectly. There’s no flaking at all. It looks really good. The text is perfect. The little gold dots are cute. I like the layout. It’s just formal enough while remaining modern at the same time, the back is actually a really cool design. It looks great in person and again. You probably have the option to delete that background off. You would prefer to have it plain. What is this kind of a cream-colored star dream? It’s actually printed on. So the actual paper is a Stardream, probably a cream and you’ll see in the names Danielle and Benjamin. If you hold it up to the light, there’s a little bit of shimmer, just enough. It’s not overpowering, not too much at all. It just adds a little and the reply card. That response card looks great, too. It coordinates with it without being too matchy-matchy it pulls the same element from the invitation pulls little gold dots, and yet you get that flipped out color, so you have cream on the response card with navy blue ink again, it’s printed perfectly It’s high-resolution it’s crisp. It looks good and the back, though, is not to make it exactly the same. The back on the response card is not the same as the back on the invitation. It coordinates perfectly so they did a really good job with this suite and I would absolutely give this an a so in review for wedding paper divas. Here would be my grades. I am giving a D to this design. Love the design love. The paper hate the printing, not very high quality. Next one this. I’m also giving a dthe again. I really like the idea, but I cannot stand to the back. I don’t want like the fake photo of foil instead of real foil and the printing is not crisp for this abstract watercolor. I’m gonna give this one probably a c-minus to a d-plu’s great idea. Neat design, very cool. The way at all corresponds the back, actually not just the front. It has some modern design sense to it, but again, the printing, especially on the small type is very fuzzy and not there quality. So C minus D next. We have the one with the kind of fake linen. Fake burlap. I again! I think I gave this one like a c-plus to it be. I like the idea. The execution is pretty good for 99% of it, But I think the wreath is a little bit fuzzy and not as crisp as I would like, but the back is good. The front overall is good and the text is actually printed with Chris. Pink, so which ones what I actually recommend from wedding paper divas, I have to the first. Is the photographic card on double thick mat? Paper looks really good, crisp ink. Great picture. If you have a picture like this where you have this guy fading off into the distance, you should absolutely consider this one, and I would probably order it without the back and finally, my absolute favorite, Danielle and Benjamin here with the Navy, Gold and cream color. It’s on a shimmery star dream type of paper. It has great ink and the back coordinates which help without being completely matchy-matchy so good choice, A plus on this one so wedding paper divas. I guess I’d say overall they get a C. However, their shipping came really fast. They sent me exactly what I had requested and two out of the six. Were ones that I would actually consider ordering. So if you want to order one of those two, It’s an A+ experience. If you wanted to order this one, it’s not an A+ experience. You’ll have to find out for yourself. Go to wedding paper divas, calm and order your sample pack today. Thanks, talk to you later. Bye bye!