Invitation return address needs to be crossed out? Help!

None of that is true. If that was then a majority of the mail sent would and should never get to the destination, including business/junk mail, since the dawn of time. There hasn’t been an issue in decades past before so why create unnecessary problems? She doesn’t want to do the work, bottom line. Take your invitation to a different post office and warn people you know from using that one. If you must use that location, demand to speak to a supervisor because she is giving you wrong information that reflects badly on the business she works for.

Yeah I agree that what she told you doesn't sound right at all. I've sent dozens if not hundreds or thousands of letters and all of them had return addresses. I wonder why she said that?

You don't have to cross out the zipcode, but it is recommended. It is to prevent the mail sorting machines from reading the wrong side of the envelope.

View Quoted Comment

Is that only when the return address is on the back? I can see the machine reading the wrong side in that case and thinking the back side is the sending address. Makes sense.

View Quoted Comment Rather than mark up a nice envelope before it arrives, it makes more sense to get a clean envelope. Your guest who receives it will wonder what happened.

There have been previous posts about invitations being returned because the return address was on the back and the invites were processed backwards, so I don't think the postal worker was lying. Is it possible all will go well? Probably, but she's trying to warn you that it might not. The USPS standard is that return address go in the upper left corner of the front of the envelope.

For what it's worth, I just got a wedding invitation in the mail today with the return address on the back flap. When I sent out my invites, the address was also on the back flap. I'm sure it does happen on occasion, but I don't know if I would say it's the norm.

View Quoted Comment I have received perfectly lovely looking envelopes with “crossed out” return address labels— it doesn’t have to be a big X. A single straight line through the middle or maybe a decorative calligraphy line will do the trick and still look classy and intentional.

My save the dates went out recently with return addresses on back and none of them were returned. I suppose it depends on the post office and sorter.

Thank you all so much for your responses. My mom and I are going to take the invitations to the post office this afternoon. We're taking pens with us just in case we need to cross out the zip code. I couldn't find any information on this on the USPS website but it does say that the return address should go on the front, not the back. I can see how it could read the back flap address and send it back to us if it's being scanned somehow. Ugh!!! Keeping my fingers crossed that we get this straightened out and that my invites reach their recipients!

View Quoted Comment

Thank you! We drew one line through the zip code and our zip code numbers are symmetrical, so it kind of had a cool look (lol) with the line through it.

Update: We went to the post office on Friday to mail the first batch of invitations. The same lady waited on me (ugh) and said that we needed to draw a line through the zip code. So my mom and I took out our pens and drew a line through. It doesn't look bad, really. The first batch went out and we want back today with the rest of the invitations. We drew a line through the zip code of all of those invitations before taking them to the post office and I didn't have any issues this time.

To clarify, this is for wedding invitations with the return address printed on the back flap. If you print the return address on the front, it should be fine. The concern is if the envelope gets put in the machine backward and reads your reteurn address, it could get mailed right back to you (or whatever your return address is) rather than going to its intended recipient.

This was a pain but I learned some stuff and it all worked out. Thank you all for your input! :-)

View Quoted Comment Thanks for the update. I learned something new.