what is hand canceling??

ive seen this topic being posted a lot

this might seem stupid but what is HAND CANCELING? what do you brides mean when you say that??

when you mail your invitations, you put a regular postage stamp on them. then you bring them into the post office and ask them to 'hand cancel' them.

they will use a rubber stamp to officially 'cancel' the stamp (so it can't be used again) ... they do this instead of running them through one of the machines that can damage your invitations.

there is no extra charge for this, just the cost of whatever the postage is to mail your invites

yup- and i'll add that its not something that HAS to be done... it does look nice and help protect the invites, but they still have to go through the sorting machines to get where they are going... so it really only protects them from one of the many machines....
but, it does look nice and is good for extra thick or big invites...