DIY Personalized Postage

I love personalize postage. There are third party companies that work with the United States Post Service but... it's pretty pricey!

Finding the balance between having a stamp that matches the theme of the card or invitation I am sending and keeping the costs reasonable kept me up at nights. Not really it just makes a better story me look obsessive and ridiculous.

A premature purchase of 125 stamps actually helped me find a solution to the  my problem. Knowing the weight of the invitation, I bought two-ounce wedding cake stamps. The postage more than covered the weight of the invitation, however,  I didn't take into account thickness which required additional postage.

Image from United State Postal Service website

Unfortunately the Postal Service clerk informed me that they were not able take the 125 stamps back for a refund or even a credit towards the postage I would need, Twenty-two cent stamps were offered for purchase to cover the remaining postage.

Image from United State Postal Service website

Ummm no, vanity would not allow the invitation to go out with a wedding cake and a penguin stamp. I completely understand that those 170 people would open their mailbox, take out the invitation, open it and throw away the envelope without even noticing the postage. Knowing that didn't help my obsession, but I had an idea and went to the main sorting facility for my area to find out if it would work.

I discussed the idea with two super helpful and funny clerks. They thought I was nuts to worry about something so trivial but agreed that my plan was a genius solution to my non-existent  problem.

Self-serve postage kiosk

So I bought twenty-two cent postage through the self-serve kiosk. I could only buy 5 at a time so I had to make 25 separate transactions. As dumb as that seems it got the job done. The result:

Two-ounce stamp + extra postage label =  happy invitation mailing individual

The postage label the kiosk prints has blank space on the right. There is actually a dotted line with "Fold Here" instructions but I ignored that, placed my two-ounce stamp over the words and trimmed off the extra label to the right of my wedding cake two-ounce stamp. Now I had the correct postage without resorting to a hodgepodge of stamps.

Other than the blurring of the addressee, sender and "Example"
watermark this is what the invitation looked like before mailing

After completing my postage purchase, I went back to talk to my friendly and helpful clerks. I told them that during all that time in front of the kiosk I had been thinking (which made them laugh). I wondered if I could use this same technique for regular first-class postage. Could postage be purchased through the self-serve kiosk and the blank space on the right personalized with ink stamps, personalized stickers etc... The answer was YES!

FYI without trimming the blank space on the printed postage label, from the fold line to the right edge, is 2-inches. The label is 1.5-inches tall. That's a ton of room to add something cute!