How I used Basic Invite to do my FIRST holiday cards ever.
If y'all know me, you know I haven't sent out holiday cards...ever. Besides that the thought gives me instant anxiety, I've always had an excuse: too busy with work, husband on deployment and lacking recent family photos or (last year) just gave birth and could barely function, let alone curate amazing cards and distribute them to our friends and family.
Well, this year is going to change all of that! I heard about Basic Invite, a truly custom invitation company that makes the whole holiday cards online process super easy. I had ambitious plans last weekend to do a professional photo shoot in the morning, a quick editing turnaround and have hours set aside to create our cards. Good thing I didn't need hours with Basic Invite, because that spare time never came!
In reality, we had time to do a quick self-shoot before brunch plans. Lucky for us, it was a gorgeous morning, and the light in our backyard was just right for photography! This way, the kids could also play on their jungle gym in between takes 😉.
All I needed was about 20-30 minutes on the actual platform, including the billing page. The process to use Basic Invite to create our holiday cards was super easy! The platform has a variety of holiday cards for popular cultural celebrations such as Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's and more. It also provides selections to choose based on audience, like corporate versus family.
With more than 630 templates to choose from, I wasn't worried about someone else having the same card as us. To match our outfits, I selected a steel blue version from the corporate group (surprisingly chic!) and got to editing. The Basic Invite platform was user-intuitive, but I had 1-2 questions because I'm admittedly not the best with new technology 🙃. A customer service rep popped up to chat, but not in an intrusive way. She sounded like a real person on the other end, took my question and provided a reasonably quick answer that helped finish my design.
After the design was complete, the surface of the card was customizable, and there were options to add a decorative back to the card or change the color of each element to exactly how you'd like it, which is rare for an online stationery company. The other trait I noticed is that Basic Invite is one of only a few websites that allows customers to order a printed sample of their actual invitation before they place their final order. This way, they can see the paper quality and how it will print in real life and make sure the card is perfect!
Lastly, I found out this incredibly cool feature by Basic Invite: an address capturing service that allows customers to share a link on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media to request their friends and family’s addresses. The addresses are then stored in the customer’s account and can be selected during the design process. The best part is, recipient address printing on the cards is no extra charge.
I really appreciate how seamless this stationery company made my first custom Christmas cards experience! Basic Invite also produces wedding invitations, baby announcements, event invitations, stationery, business cards and event websites (I.e. a wedding event page). No matter how busy you are, I promise you'll have time for this service. I'll share an update when I get my cards in the mail - I can't wait! You can use this coupon code to get 15% off your first purchase with them: 15FF51.
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This article was written through a sponsored partnership with Basic Invite.