The date is set, the guest list is signed off, and the invitations need to be in envelopes this week. Invitation printing in London on premium named stocks, with real metallic foil applied in-house, no die and no minimum quantity, so a run of twenty costs you no more setup than a run of two thousand. Plain stock invitations can run same day. Foiled and embossed work is usually next day.
Walk in with the artwork and the guest count, feel the stocks in your hand, or send the file and collect the finished cards.
City Images, time after time, produces high-quality, immaculate products. Big shout out to Heather who is incredibly efficient, professional and executes to perfection. Thank you, City Images!
This is an excellent printing service. They clearly do big things too, but even for smaller projects like mine they're quick, efficient, accurate, and produce high quality output. The advice and support I received from Heather was exceptional.
I worked with James on a branding installation project at MM Ilford. He managed all the client side interactions, community was quick and clear and the quality of materials were excellent. would highly recommend working with City Images
Excellent service, great quality print. I highly recommend them for business and professional usage. Sherif was very thorough and provided a smooth experience. They indeed do provide same day print and delivery service in London.
A centrally located and professional print store, with huge and great quality printers regardless of the small storefront, fun and reliable staff, and an impeccable and fast service. They punch way above their weight - highly recommended!
Perfect print on large sheet of antique mirror. We are so delighted with the final image - exceeded our expectations. Francisco (Chico) was super patient and knowledgeable and the price was good vale. Would definitely recommend.
Was attended to professionally at City Images by Heather with attention to detail all within 24 hours. Highly impressed with the way she handled the assignment and the personal touch given to the job. Will highly recommend City Images anytime.
Professional and Reliable "From start to finish, the team was professional, friendly, and efficient. They kept me updated throughout the process, and the final product was delivered ahead of schedule. Exceptional service and reliability"
Fast, reliable and great quality. Been working with this company for a number of years now, the team is very responsive and helpful. Signage is always good quality and delivered in time. Wholeheartedly recommended!
Always incredible service and quality from the team including Sherif, Francisco, and Heather. Highly recommended.
City Images, time after time, produces high-quality, immaculate products. Big shout out to Heather who is incredibly efficient, professional and executes to perfection. Thank you, City Images!
This is an excellent printing service. They clearly do big things too, but even for smaller projects like mine they're quick, efficient, accurate, and produce high quality output. The advice and support I received from Heather was exceptional.
I worked with James on a branding installation project at MM Ilford. He managed all the client side interactions, community was quick and clear and the quality of materials were excellent. would highly recommend working with City Images
Excellent service, great quality print. I highly recommend them for business and professional usage. Sherif was very thorough and provided a smooth experience. They indeed do provide same day print and delivery service in London.
A centrally located and professional print store, with huge and great quality printers regardless of the small storefront, fun and reliable staff, and an impeccable and fast service. They punch way above their weight - highly recommended!
Perfect print on large sheet of antique mirror. We are so delighted with the final image - exceeded our expectations. Francisco (Chico) was super patient and knowledgeable and the price was good vale. Would definitely recommend.
Was attended to professionally at City Images by Heather with attention to detail all within 24 hours. Highly impressed with the way she handled the assignment and the personal touch given to the job. Will highly recommend City Images anytime.
Professional and Reliable "From start to finish, the team was professional, friendly, and efficient. They kept me updated throughout the process, and the final product was delivered ahead of schedule. Exceptional service and reliability"
Fast, reliable and great quality. Been working with this company for a number of years now, the team is very responsive and helpful. Signage is always good quality and delivered in time. Wholeheartedly recommended!
Always incredible service and quality from the team including Sherif, Francisco, and Heather. Highly recommended.
The card stock does most of the work before anyone reads a word. Four families cover almost every invitation, listed here in the order people actually choose them. We hold and order Colorplan, GF Smith, Mohawk, Fedrigoni and Conqueror, plus pearlescent and metallic papers, and print digitally to 400gsm as standard, 550gsm on the heavier press, and heavier again by duplexing two sheets together. Walk in and feel four or five options against your artwork before you commit.
Dyed-through boards where the colour runs to the core, so a trimmed edge shows black, not a white sandwich. This is the stock that carries gold, silver, copper and holographic foil best: the metal sits proud of a matt surface and catches the light across a table. Black and deep navy need care in the artwork, which is covered further down the page. Available in weights up to 400gsm digitally, heavier by duplexing.
Two sheets glued face to face for a card that stands up on the mantelpiece and refuses to curl, taking the finished weight past 600gsm, and to any thickness again with a third sheet. Duplexing also lets you run a different colour or stock on each face, so a black reverse behind a white face is one job rather than two. It is the cheapest way to make an invitation feel expensive, because weight is the first thing a hand notices. Painted or gilded edges, the finish people usually ask for next, are a specialist job and add five to seven working days to the schedule.
The right answer when the invitation carries a photograph, an illustration or a saturated brand colour that has to match the rest of the campaign. Coated surfaces hold detail and colour density, take soft-touch, matt or gloss lamination, and accept foil cleanly. This is the everyday spec for launches, conferences and anything printed alongside printed flyers for the same event.
Tactile, slightly toothy boards with visible fibre, chosen by fashion, gallery and design clients who want the card to read as considered rather than glossy. Ink sinks in slightly, so photographs soften and type sharpens. Worth knowing before you spec it: uncoated and heavily textured surfaces take digital foil less crisply than a smooth or lightly coated sheet, so ask for a test card on the actual board rather than take a finish on trust.
Plain printed invitations on a stock we hold can be ready the same day from print-ready artwork, at either location. Add foil, embossing or lamination and it is usually next day, because each finish is a separate pass through a separate machine. Traditional die foiling, the route for very long runs and foil sitting inside an embossed shape, runs to a few days because a metal die has to be made. Tell us the date the invitations have to be in the post and we will tell you straight away whether it works.
Full-colour invitations, single or double sided, on a stock we hold, trimmed to size and boxed. Send a print-ready PDF at 1:1 with 3mm bleed and crop marks, or bring the file in on a stick. We check it before it goes on the machine rather than after, which is where most rush jobs actually fall over.
Every finish adds a pass. Digital foil goes on after the print, embossing is a separate operation again, lamination adds another, and duplexed board has to be glued and left before it is trimmed. A specially ordered stock adds a day for delivery. Painted or gilded edges are the slow one: a specialist finish that adds five to seven working days, so on most invitation deadlines we will steer you to a foil border instead. None of the rest is slow, it is just sequential, and it is why a foiled invitation is next day rather than this afternoon.
Collect from 8 Avery Row in Mayfair or 23-27 King's Terrace in Camden, or book same-day London courier, quoted per drop. Next-day DHL covers the rest of the UK, quoted with the job. Invitations leave boxed flat with the envelopes packed separately so nothing arrives creased.
Email post@cityimages.co.uk with the artwork, the quantity and the date they need to be posted, and we quote straight back. For anything else on a deadline, see our same-day printing in London hub.
Get a quoteTwo decisions set the cost and the feel: the flat size, and whether the card folds. The left column is the finished size in the hand, the right column is the fold and finishing we put on it. Anything can be cut to a size that is not on the list, and the envelope is chosen to match rather than the other way round. Open any row for the plain-English detail.
The size most people picture when they picture an invitation, and the cheapest to post. Fits a standard C6 envelope, so envelopes are easy to source in quantity and in colour. The default for weddings, private views and parties where the card carries a date, a place and a dress code and nothing else.
Twice the area, for when the invitation has to carry a programme, a menu, travel notes or a map alongside the invitation itself. Sits in a C5 envelope. Also the usual flat size for a gate or tri-fold, which folds down to a smaller finished card.
The long slim format, either as a flat card or as an A4 sheet folded twice. It suits a running order down the card, and it drops into the same DL envelope as a standard letter, which keeps postage simple for a large send.
Squares photograph well and stand out in a pile of post, with one caveat worth knowing before you commit: Royal Mail treats square envelopes as a format surcharge, so the postage costs more per card. We flag it at quote stage rather than after the run.
Our digital press takes a sheet up to 1260mm long, so a panoramic invitation, a concertina running order or a long fold-out programme is a single piece rather than something glued together. Useful for gala dinners and multi-day events where the whole schedule has to live on one card.
Trimmed to whatever the design calls for, including round-cornered cards and die-cut shapes. Send the finished size and we will confirm the sheet layout, the trim and an envelope that fits it before anything prints.
Creased and folded to open like a card. We crease before folding on every stock, which is what stops the fibre cracking along the spine on heavy or dark board. On a digitally printed 350gsm card with full ink coverage, folding without creasing first will crack it every time.
Both edges fold in to meet at the middle, so the invitation opens like a pair of doors onto the detail inside. The format people associate with a formal wedding or a launch dinner, and it is a fold, not an extra product, so it costs less than most people expect.
Three panels, either rolled in on themselves or folded as a concertina so the panels open flat in sequence. Roll-fold and double-parallel folds are available on the same equipment. The right choice when there is a programme, a menu and directions to fit alongside the invitation.
A perforated tear-off section, so the reply slip comes away cleanly from the invitation rather than being a second loose card to lose. Also used for tickets and admission stubs on paid events.
Real metallic foil applied in-house with no die and no minimum, embossing as a separate pass, and soft-touch, matt or gloss lamination. Painted or gilded edges add five to seven working days, so they are worth asking about only when the date allows. Full detail is on our foil printing and embossing page.
Envelopes are supplied with the invitations, chosen to fit the finished size. They can be printed with a return address, a crest or a full-bleed colour, and we can print guest addresses directly onto the envelope so nothing has to be handwritten or labelled. Send us the guest list and we can stuff, seal and post the whole run through Royal Mail as well, so the job leaves as invitations and arrives as invitations. Confirm the envelope colour at the same time as the stock so the two are seen together.
Most of the invitation printing that comes through our door is corporate, cultural and hospitality, with weddings and private celebrations alongside it. Invitations we have printed include the GQ Food & Drink Awards, dinner cards for Swarovski, Hackett London at Henley, the Hamleys franchise conference, press days for Starworks Group and Gastronomic Week at Brown’s Hotel. The brief changes, the deadline changes, and the finish changes. What does not change is that the card has to feel right in the hand, which is why almost every client ends up in Mayfair holding the stock before they sign it off.
Awards dinners, conferences, product launches
Museums, galleries, auction houses
The full stationery suite
Hotels, restaurants, private members
Press days, showroom appointments
Galas, dinners, auctions
Walk in to Mayfair (8 Avery Row) or Camden (23-27 King's Terrace). Bring the artwork and the guest count and we will put the stocks in front of you.
Invitations fail in three predictable places, and none of them are the printing. They are the fold, the foil, and the envelope. All three are cheap to fix before the run and expensive to fix after it, which is why we check the file rather than just print it.
A folded card printed with a full-bleed dark colour will crack white along the spine unless the sheet is creased first and folded with the grain. On heavy digital stock the toner sits on the surface, so the fibre splits and the toner splits with it. We crease every folded invitation before folding, which is the step that keeps the fibre intact. If you have been sent a folded card with a hairline white line down the crease, that is what happened.
Foil is not a colour in the file, it is a separate layer. Supply the foil elements as 100 percent black on their own layer or their own page, and keep hairlines and very fine serif detail above about 0.5pt or the foil will break up. Surface matters as much as artwork: smooth and lightly coated stocks take digital foil crisply, while heavily textured and absorbent uncoated boards hold it less evenly. Because there is no minimum, a single test card on the actual stock is a real order, so you can see the finish before the run rather than imagine it.
The commonest expensive mistake on an invitation is a square or oversized envelope on a send of five hundred, because Royal Mail prices square and large-letter formats above a standard letter. Thickness counts too: a duplexed card with a ribbon can push the whole thing into the next postage band. We size the envelope with you at quote stage and say plainly when a 5mm change to the card keeps the send inside the cheaper band.
Send the artwork, the quantity, the finished size and the date they need to be posted. Email post@cityimages.co.uk or walk into either location. No artwork yet is not a problem, our designers set invitations from scratch.
We check bleed, trim, fold placement and the foil layer before anything runs, and put the shortlisted stocks in front of you. On foiled work, ask for a single test card on the actual board first.
Printed, then creased, folded and trimmed. Foiling and lamination are separate passes; embossing is a separate process again. Plain runs finish the same day. Anything with a finish on it is usually ready the next.
Envelopes supplied to fit, printed with a return address or guest addresses if you want them. Boxed flat and ready to collect from Mayfair or Camden, couriered across London, or sent next-day on DHL.
An invitation is printed once and posted once, so the waste is decided before the machine starts. We print digitally, which means no plates and no make-ready sheets thrown away to get colour up to standard, and short runs print at the quantity you actually need rather than a minimum you have to over-order to reach. Paper is 90 percent FSC certified across the business, uncoated and recycled boards sit alongside the premium ranges and take print beautifully, offcuts and trim go back through FirstMile recycling, and we are working to carbon neutral by 2029. If the brief is a low-impact invitation, ask for recycled uncoated stock and skip the lamination, and it stays kerbside recyclable.
Read our sustainability pageEverything worth knowing before you order invitations. Turnaround, stocks, sizes, foil, envelopes and artwork. Cannot find your answer? We pick up the phone.
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Call us directlyAt either of our two walk-in locations. Mayfair is at 8 Avery Row, W1K 4AL, a few minutes from Bond Street, and Camden is at 23-27 King's Terrace, NW1 0JP. Walk in with artwork on a stick or emailed ahead, choose the stock in your hand, and collect the finished invitations. If you are not local, send the file to post@cityimages.co.uk and we deliver across London by courier or next-day on DHL nationwide, quoted with the job.
Yes, on plain printed invitations where we hold the stock and the artwork is print-ready. Foiling, embossing and lamination each add a pass through a separate machine, so those are usually ready the next day. Painted or gilded edges are the exception, adding five to seven working days. Call Mayfair on 020 7495 0421 with the quantity and the deadline and we will confirm before you send anything.
It depends on four things: quantity, stock, size and finish. Digital printing means short runs are viable, and because our foiling needs no metal die there is no origination cost to spread across the run, so twenty foiled invitations is a real order rather than a minimum-charge conversation. Send the artwork, the quantity and the finished size to post@cityimages.co.uk and a priced quote comes back the same working day.
There is no minimum. We print single invitations, runs of twenty for a private dinner, and runs in the thousands for a conference. Digital foil is the reason: with no die to make, a short foiled run costs proportionally what a long one does.
Yes. Real metallic film in gold, silver, copper, rose gold, holographic and coloured foils, bonded to the print and registered to your artwork, with no die and no minimum. Traditional die foiling, for very long runs and for foil pressed into an embossed shape, takes a few days because the die has to be made first. Both are covered on our foil printing and embossing page.
Premium named stocks including Colorplan, GF Smith, Mohawk, Fedrigoni and Conqueror, plus pearlescent and metallic papers, uncoated and recycled boards, and coated silks. We print digitally to 400gsm as standard and 550gsm on the heavier press, and duplex two sheets for 600gsm and above. Walk into Mayfair and we will put the shortlist in front of you against your artwork.
A6 (105 x 148mm) is the classic invitation size and the cheapest to post. A5 suits invitations carrying a programme or a map, DL suits a running order, and squares photograph well but attract a Royal Mail format surcharge. We also cut custom sizes and print panoramic cards up to 1260mm long. Envelopes are matched to whichever size you choose.
Yes. Envelopes are supplied to fit the finished card, plain or printed with a return address, a crest or a full-bleed colour. We can also print guest addresses directly onto the envelopes from your spreadsheet, which is faster and reads better than labels on a send of any size. If you would rather not handle the send at all, we can stuff, seal and post the run through Royal Mail for you.
Yes, and most couples order the set rather than the invitation alone: save the date, invitation, RSVP card, order of service, menus, table numbers and thank-you cards. Ordering them together means one colour reference across the lot. Order of service booklets are bound through binding services and the table pieces run with printed menus.
Yes. Our in-house designers set invitations from a brief, or work from your typeface and brand assets, and can typeset a full wedding or event suite so every piece matches. See artwork and design services. If you already have a designer, send us their print-ready PDF and we will check it before it runs.
A print-ready PDF at 1:1 with 3mm bleed and crop marks, fonts embedded, images at 300dpi and artwork in CMYK. Put any foil elements on their own layer or page as 100 percent black, and keep foil detail above roughly 0.5pt so it does not break up. We check every file before it prints and come back to you if something needs adjusting, rather than printing it and hoping.
Most of what we print is exactly that: awards dinners, product launches, private views, press days, conference invitations, charity galas and announcement cards. Corporate work usually pairs the invitation with name badges, tickets, table cards and signage for the same event, all colour-matched, all quoted on one call.
Two walk-in locations in Central London. Both open Monday to Friday. No appointment needed. Bring the artwork, hold the stocks, and talk it through with the people who will print it.
Email us8 Avery Row, London W1K 4AL
Walk-in welcome. No appointment needed. Nearest stations: Bond Street, Oxford Circus, Green Park.
The walk-in counter and the stock library. Bring the artwork and the guest count, put four or five boards side by side against your own design, see the foil options in the hand, and agree the spec in person. Our Mayfair location is a short walk from Bond Street and serves clients across Soho, Fitzrovia, Marylebone, Belgravia, St James's, Westminster, and Covent Garden.
23-27 King's Terrace, London NW1 0JP
Walk-in welcome. No appointment needed. Nearest stations: Camden Town, Mornington Crescent.
Walk-in collection and briefing. Agencies, galleries, restaurants and event organisers bring artwork in and talk the job through face-to-face, and finished work can be collected here or sent out. Serves Camden Town, Kentish Town, Primrose Hill, Regent's Park, King's Cross, Bloomsbury, Islington, and Holloway.
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