Piece price + 2026 postage math for your full stationery suite
| Mail Piece | Rate | Typical Use |
|---|---|---|
| First-class letter, 1 oz | $0.82 | Lightweight invite, single card |
| Each additional ounce | + $0.29 | Invite + RSVP + details card (2 oz = $1.11) |
| Nonmachinable surcharge | + $0.49 | Square, rigid, or wax-sealed envelopes ($1.31 for 1 oz) |
| RSVP postcard | $0.65 | Reply card, half a letter's rate |
| RSVP envelope return stamp | $0.82 | Traditional reply card |
USPS raised the Forever stamp to 82¢ on July 12, 2026; the additional-ounce price stayed 29¢ and the nonmachinable surcharge sits at 49¢. Take one finished suite to the post office and have it weighed — a suite that creeps past an ounce boundary costs you 29¢ per envelope.
| Tier | Price per Set | What It Looks Like |
|---|---|---|
| Budget digital | $1.25 – $2.00 | Flat digital print, standard cardstock, online printers |
| Standard | $2.00 – $5.00 | Thicker cardstock, envelope liners, thermography |
| Premium foil / letterpress | $5.00 – $10.00 | Foil stamping, letterpress impressions, deckled edges |
| Luxury custom | $10.00+ | Hand-calligraphy, hand-made paper, boxed suites |
Embellishments like foil, liners, and wax seals add roughly 50¢ to $2 per invitation on mid-tier printers. National anchors: couples average $220 on invitations alone, $518 on the full suite, and most standard 100-guest suites land between $400 and $600.
Stationery is one of the few wedding lines where the math is fully visible: pieces times price, plus stamps times pieces. The calculator prices printing on the quantity you actually order (your household count plus a 10% overage for keepsakes and re-sends) and postage on the quantity you mail.
Printing = households × 1.10 × (tier price + insert charge). Invitation postage = households × (82¢ + 29¢ × (ounces − 1) + 49¢ if square + RSVP return rate). Save-the-dates = households × (print + mail rate). Add the three lines for your total.
Count households, not guests — one invitation per address. Pick the printing tier that matches the look you want, weigh a sample suite at the post office to set the weight field honestly, and decide whether your RSVP is a stamped envelope (traditional, 82¢), a postcard (65¢), or a website (free, and it saves the reply card's print cost too). Toggle save-the-dates off if you're skipping them.
One hundred households, standard $3.00 printing with a details card (+40¢): order 110 sets × $3.40 = $374 printed. Each 2-ounce rectangular envelope with a stamped RSVP inside costs $1.93 to mail, so 100 × $1.93 = $193. Postcard save-the-dates at $1.40 each add $140. Total: $707, about $7.07 a household — a bit above the $518 full-suite average, driven by the insert and the RSVP envelope.
The budget version shows how fast the levers move: 75 households, $1.50 digital printing (order 80 = $120), a 1-ounce invite-only design with online RSVP (75 × $0.82 = $61.50), no save-the-dates. Total: $181.50. Same wedding, same information delivered, an 80% smaller bill.
Couples spend $400 to $600 on average for a standard 100-guest stationery suite with postage, and the full-suite national average is about $518. Invitations alone (no save-the-dates, no extras) average $220. Budget digital suites start near $1.25-$2 per piece while foil-stamped and letterpress designs run $5-$10 or more.
A 1-ounce invitation needs an 82-cent Forever stamp; each additional ounce adds 29 cents, so a typical 2-ounce suite costs $1.11 to mail. Square or rigid envelopes add a 49-cent nonmachinable surcharge — $1.31 for a 1-ounce square — and the RSVP return adds another 82-cent stamp or a 65-cent postcard rate.
Order by household, not guest count — couples and families at one address get one invitation. A 100-guest list is typically 60-70 households. Order about 10% extra for keepsakes, mistakes, and last-minute additions; reprinting 10 invitations later costs far more than printing 10 up front.
Square envelopes fail the Postal Service's shape test (the length divided by height must be at least 1.3), so sorting machines can't process them. That triggers a 49-cent nonmachinable surcharge on every piece, even lightweight ones — about $49 extra per 100 invitations on top of regular rates.
For local weddings with plenty of notice, they're optional. For destination weddings and holiday-weekend dates, they're near-essential because guests need lead time to book travel. A postcard save-the-date at 65 cents to mail keeps the line around $140 for 100 households, roughly a fifth of what a full mailed card costs.