Hand Canceling:Sending your fancy invite thru USPS

A frequent question that I am asked is " How can I ship this?", (pertaining to invitation or wedding suite they they have purchased). And the answer is " ask to hand cancel at the post office".
Hand canceling means that a postal worker stamps a mark over the postage stamp (so the stamp can't be reused), instead of putting it through a machine to mark it.

{The Origin of Hand Canceling}

Early stamp cancellations were all applied by hand, commonly using hand stamps. Where hand stamps were not available, stamps often were canceled by marking over the stamp with pen, such as writing an "x". Pen cancellations were used in the United States into the 1880s, and in a sense continue to this day, when a postal clerk notices a stamp has escaped cancellation and marks it with a ball point pen or market.
In 1875, Thomas and Martin Leavitt (brothers) patented the first machine in the U.S that canceled postal stamps, of course the machine has undergone some updating and an improved version is the one that is used today.
So now that you have paid for your fancy or bulky invites you want to make sure that they get to there destination in one piece. So when you mail your package just ask the postal worker to "hand cancel" your package and they will stamp it instead of putting it through the machine. This service is free of charge and yes they may grumble about doing more work ( I know my post office does), but just be assertive about it!.
This is really for invitations that are bulky, have extra embellishments, like knotted ribbons, buckles, wax seals or anything that makes the invitation/envelope bulge out...not lay flat. If you have a flat invitation or package then you may want to go ahead and ship thru regular canceling methods.
Just remember that it is no guarantee that your invite will not be put thru the machine or envelope ripped/damaged. As we know, mail changes many hands from the time it leaves yours to the time it gets to its recipient. And though everyone thinks their package is most important, the USPS seeing thousands if not millions of packages a day and they just want to get it processed and might not take the same care that you do when putting it together.....