H2 Cards

H2 cards has really great prices and a very nice and responsive staff. You can view the portfolio in person at their store or have it mailed straight to your house!

There were a few invitations that were really cute. They come in various different colored envelopes and different thermography fonts. They print in both english and chinese and offer invitations that have one language on each side.

The store is located in Chinatown, San Francisco. Our invite has a double happiness symbol on it. Their quality of paper is great. I was planning to design the invites myself, but it became too burdensome b/c my husband and I are very busy. I also scrapped the idea of doing my own invites b/c my mother wanted them to be Chinese/English. You can’t see it here, but on the back of the English side is a Chinese translated version. The insert goes into the double happiness part (very unique design, I thought). Many of our guests loved the invites. BTW, H2 cards is also good to work with b/c they make maps, inserts, etc. We had a separate and private ceremony in our backyard (and only invited family), so they made a special ceremony card for us. Cost = $1450 total (for 225 invites, envelopes, inserts, response card, ceremony card, all of which cost about $6.40 per invite). The cost sounds steep, but actually, with tax and everything they printed for me, it compared well to other places. As for H2, I gave them an A- for how easy it was to work with them and for all the raves from relatives and friends. The folks who work at the store are also bilingual (Cantonese/Mandarin). I worked with Mage.

I used H2 cards for my invitations for our Chinese reception and really loved the way they turned out. I worked with Sammi in their SF Chinatown store, but I just learned she left to go back to school. I went to their store with my sister and parents and Sammi was more than accommodating to make sure we all had our answers to our questions. Their website has a good variety of their invitations offered at their store. I noticed that they use to put the price of their invitations on their website, but when I look now, they actually want you to call their office in SF or NY for a quote. That makes more sense because I noticed their website price for our invitations was close to $100 more than what the store quoted us.

The invitation we got had a modern style and my parents loved that it was bilingual (they also do trilingual invitations). They were really responsive on getting the proofs to us on time and made sure to update me how the process was going. We also purchased wedding favors of crystal apples from them and only one had a broken leaf. Much to my horror, my mom tried bargaining with them regarding the cost.. and to my surprise, she actually got a deal on the favors. =)

Some of their more popular wedding favors such as ceramic figures and certain crystal figures are back ordered close to 6 months. My parents wanted a double happiness crystal cube but it was back ordered in Hong Kong for 8 months. I'm happy with what we ended up with but if you do want more of their unique figures, I would recommend ordering early.

H2 cards was a place that we could get great wedding favors and invitations for all of our guests. Although they cater to mainly the chinese community (I think they get most of their favors from Hong Kong) I must say, a lot of their stuff was really cute and the prices were very reasonable.

We ended up making the favors ourselves but I was really interested in the set of magnetic photo frames that they had! They also had books and books of invitations to go through!

If you are looking for an invitation vendor that will do dual languages, I would go to H2. BUT, if you're on a budget, I wouldn't go there. They have a ton of selections, plus they carry other vendors invitations too. But their own is cheaper. Cute little store. They have everything nicely displayed and oraganize for you to look at. We walked over to Ho Tai down the street, and I got a headache just walking in there through the mess.

I must warn you that you will pay for EVERY little thing. I mean, you think if you buy invitations, you get envelopes...NOPE, extra! One shocking thing was, when I expected to pay extra for the dual language, I got charge for a second plate. I mean, I thought that's what the dual language charge was, but no, it's an extra charge for using another plate to print the second language!! OMG! Basic is a black thermal print, but extra for foil colored printing. You want a return address on your invitation, extra. I'm serious, everthing was extra (except maybe the font).

One more warning. Please come prepare on what you want written on the invitation. If you change ANYTHING after, even when you get your sample print, you will be charged a $25 fee. They will give you outline for "fill in the blank". And it will be extact what the outline reads on your invitation. So don't fill in the blank and just give it to them if that's not what you want written. What I did was bring home the outline, and just used it as a reference. I later emailed them EXACTLY how I wanted the invitations to print.

It was expensive, but they did everything right the first time, and that was worth it to me.

we got our invitations here. The paper quality was OK. I think if you are planning a trip to Asia, you might want to get them over there instead cuase I heard it was cheaper

I searched high and low for invitations that would have both english and chinese and couldn't find anything that I liked until I went to H2. We worked with Mage and she was so accomodating and helpful in helping us decide all of the details. We even got our favors here so that everything would have the same theme. They were very efficient in getting us the proofs on time and were able to have our programs printed even though we went just a few weeks before the big date.