I googled to find reviews on the Minted Four-Panel Invitations but I didn’t see anything, so I wanted to make sure I document my thoughts properly such that other brides can find this useful. This review is not sponsored, none of my links are affiliate links, and Minted has nothing to do with this post.
Note: As with most 2020 brides, our original “big” wedding celebration was postponed to next year. We still mailed our invitations out earlier this year, before COVID happened, so we were able to get good use out of them. Sadly, a lot of other couples basically had their invitations go to waste. I heard from other couples that if your wedding was postponed, Minted will give you a discount code to re-order new invitations. That’s something to keep in mind if you decide to order from them.
One of things I cared about least in my wedding planning process, apart from flowers and decor, was our invitations. I always thought that invitations were a bit of a waste of money, since most people will just throw them away once they read the information on them. This is especially true of entire invitation “suites,” where in addition to an invitation card, you also get the reception information card, details card, accommodations card, etc etc. Yes apparently sending your guests a stack of papers with everything on a separate card is a thing. These “suites” can also cost upwards of several hundred to even a THOUSAND dollars. Nope, I wasn’t going to spend that much money on cards when I can put it towards booze or an oyster shucker bar instead.
I had originally planned on getting my invitations from Costco. They have some beautifully pre-designed template cards for very affordable prices, but it wasn’t customizable and if you wanted to add additional information, you needed to add another set of detail cards. While it was still much more affordable than buying it elsewhere, I still didn’t like the idea of sending a bunch of loose cards to my guests. This is when I discovered the Minted “Bride on a Budget” section and the Four-Panel Invitations.
Invitations on a budget
Minted offers two types of invitations on a budget. The All-in-One Invitations are great if you are doing your RSVPs traditionally by mail, and if most of the details of your wedding will be provided elsewhere, like on your wedding website. The other option, which is what we opted for, was the Four-Panel Invitations. These are essentially folded cards that have the main invitation with the primary details on the front of the card, and then the inside folded part is completely customizable. You can include photos of yourself, or fill the inside with details, which is what we did. We wanted to give our guests as much information upfront as possible in the most straightforward way, so we put the schedule of events, venue address, RSVP link (we are collecting RSVPs electronically), wedding website link, and more all inside the card.
Designing our invitations
Designing this card was super simple and straightforward. Minted offers a ton of invitation designs on their website, and most of them come adapted for the Four-Panel style. We were able to narrow down the list to a few designs we liked, and then we played around with putting in our details to see which one looked best with our details in them. The design we ended up with is called Heartbeat – Barrie really liked how simple it looked, but I didn’t like the font styles or the heart in the middle. Thankfully, all of that was customizable – we were able to change the fonts from a wide selection of font styles readily available through minted, and we were also able to request that the heart be removed and replaced with a simple ampersand.
I didn’t particularly enjoy using the online editor; it was a bit tedious to use and the lines didn’t line up straight, which was a bit annoying. That being said, after you input your information and submit your order, Minted has in-house graphic designers who will take your invitation and edit it for any special requests, straighten out the lines and spacing, and adjust it so that it looks good from a professional point of view. We had a few small items we wanted them to edit (including removing that heart), and also straighten out the spacing a bit, which they were able to do perfectly. They also made a few small adjustments that we didn’t request, such as edited the font sizing so everything looked more even and balanced. While it wasn’t something we asked for, we’re super happy that they did that because we’re way happier with the end result (designed by a professional!) than the one we put together.
We reviewed two versions of proofs created by Minted graphic designers, which took a bit under 48 hours to do once our order was placed. Once the final proof was approved, our invitations went into production straight away, and was shipped out shortly after that. The total time between me submitting my order to receiving our invitations in the mail was just a week, which was incredible since they were personalized for us. Keep in mind that we’re in Vancouver and our order shipped from Seattle so it came in under two days via Fedex. If you’re anywhere else in Canada or the US, it might take a bit longer.
This is what the Heartbeat template looked like originally:
This is what our final invitation design looks like (with certain details blurred out), after it was edited by the graphic designers:
Quality of invitations
I’m super impressed with the quality of these invitations. Despite being the “budget” option, the paper quality was just beautiful and thick. Because my cards were bifold, Minted also included vellum paper to put in between the two folds on the inside of the card so that the ink doesn’t transfer from one side of the page to the other. The quality of the envelopes were also very nice, and I think Minted also included some extra envelopes in case we mess up some of the hand-written addressing. Overall we’re very happy with the quality of the invitations and we’re thrilled that we took the leap and ordered from Minted.
We did order some samples (free!) just to see what the invitations would look like, but for some reason they didn’t make it to me until almost a month after we placed our final order. Overall it was a risk that we were happy we took.
Why Minted
Okay so here’s the important part. Apart from the ease of design and the card-shaped invitations, we picked Minted because they provide free guest addressing. Yes you read that right – instead of spending hours handwriting your guests’ names and addresses on envelopes, resulting in cramped hands, or paying someone to write them for you, resulting in a reduced wallet size, you can use Minted’s address collection form to get everyone’s addresses and then Minted will print them for you FOR FREE. Similar to the invitation designs, you can also choose from a variety of envelope print designs. We picked something really simple with just a nice classic cursive for the guests’ names, and then a clean printed font for the addresses.
The Minted invitations are slightly pricier than the Costco ones, but I think it is totally worth it because you save hours and hours writing out names and addresses.
The other convenient thing is that once the guests’ addresses have been acquired, you can also automatically feed them into your website for RSVP collection purposes.
The cost
We ordered 65 of these Four-Panel Invitations for US$122, but HERE’S A TIP! If you sign up for the Minted FREE wedding website, you automatically get a US$50 credit in your account that you can use towards anything. These credits can’t be stacked with a promo code, but they can be stacked with the refer-a-friend credit of $25. We ended up paying US$72 for 65 invitations, including the envelopes.
We paid $15 for shipping and then another C$16 for tax and duty, which came in a separate Fedex bill afterwards.
Minted wedding website
As a side mini review, I really love the Minted website. My type A-ness basically meant I made 4 wedding websites using different platforms (WithJoy, theKnot, Zola, and Minted), and I finally decided on Minted because it was the cleanest of all of the available designs, the website interface was very easy to use, load times were fast and efficient (the WithJoy website took forever to load), and there were very little reported glitches in the guest list / RSVP process (theKnot was really bad for this). The only downside is there is less flexibility in terms of adding pages or uploading photos (apart from the main one on the front page) unless you upgrade to their premium website, which costs US$20.
The basic website includes pages for the wedding details, RSVP, wedding party information, registry info and travel, but it does not include photo uploads or adding your own custom pages. The premium website includes everything a regular website does, in addition to unlimited photo uploads, a custom URL so you can be nameandname.com, instead of nameandname.minted.us, and adding custom pages (we added a FAQ and “things to do around the city” pages). ANOTHER TIP! If you sign up for Minted, you will often get custom codes in your inbox. I was sent a code for a free upgrade to a premium website so I was able to upgrade without paying the $20.
This post was not sponsored or affiliated in any way by Minted. I paid for our invitations out of pocket.
*Maddy Loves 