Custom Buttons for Lloyd Harbor

Should the favor buttons name Lloyd Harbor, or name the harbor the guests can see from the tent? Name the town. A favor button is a small flat thing a guest carries home in a pocket, and the one word that makes it mean something later is the name of the place the day actually happened in. That is the question planners ask us first when they book an event on this side of Suffolk County, and it is a sharper question than it looks, because the name printed on the artwork is doing real work for you.

Two names that end the same way

The reason the question comes up at all is that the name here shares its second word with the place next door. Cold Spring Harbor is a separate place with a separate name, and a guest scanning a one and a half inch button at arm's length is reading shapes, not words. If the artwork sets the two words in a thin script at six point, half the room will read whichever of the two names they already had in their head on the drive in.

There are two practical fixes. The first is to set the town name larger than everything else on the face and let the date drop to a supporting line. The second is to drop the town name and use the couple's names and the date, which works when the invitations already did the geographic work. What does not work is a middle setting where the place name is present but small. That is where the confusion lives.

If your event spans two places, a rehearsal in Centerport and the wedding itself here, it is usually cleaner to print two designs than to make one button carry both. The price per button is the same on either design, so splitting a run costs you nothing in the button line of the order.

Five sizes, and what each one tends to get used for

We make round pin-back buttons in five sizes and nothing else. The one and a half inch is the favor size. It sits flat on a place card, it fits in a small envelope, and it does not overwhelm a table setting. The two and a quarter inch is the size people reach for when there is a photograph involved, because a face needs the extra room. The three inch is the one that reads across a room, which makes it the staff button, the bridal party button, or the shower game button.

Above 999 of one size the answer is a quote, so the published ladder stops there.

• The 1 inch $1.49 each
• The 1.25 inch $1.69 each
• The 1.5 inch $1.89 each
• The 2.25 inch $1.99 each
• The 3 inch $2.49 each

The discount is worked out per size and applied automatically. Two hundred is the cheaper of the two per button, at 20 percent under the listed rate against the listed rate for one.

A worked example at a real guest count

Take a shower and wedding list of two hundred and forty people, all getting the one and a half inch favor button. That is two hundred and forty at $1.51 each, the rate that applies from 100 of one size, which is $362.40 in buttons. Flat shipping for an order that size is $14.99. The order comes to $377.39 before tax.

Shipping is the one line that moves with quantity, and it moves in steps rather than smoothly. The tiers go by total buttons on the order: $9.99 up to one hundred, $14.99 up to two hundred and fifty, $19.99 up to five hundred, and $24.99 up to one thousand.

Two hundred and forty is worth looking at twice, because it sits ten buttons under a boundary. Adding eleven more moves the order into the next shipping tier and the shipping line goes from $14.99 to $19.99. Nothing here is negotiated: the band your count lands in sets the rate. So if you are hovering near two hundred and fifty and the extras are spares rather than guests, it is worth knowing exactly where the line is before you round up.

Where we are from you

The shop sits 3.7 miles south east of you, measured as a straight line rather than as anything you would drive. The same coverage runs through West Manor at 1.4 miles from us, Cold Spring Harbor and Huntington at 3.0 miles, Centerport at 4.5 miles, and Huntington Station at 4.9 miles. All of that is Huntington township, and the 11743 ZIP covers more of it than people expect, which is why an address alone does not always tell you which village an event is in.

Artwork before the headcount is final

Event counts are rarely final when the design work starts, and the two decisions are independent here. Artwork is artwork. Quantity is a number you type at the end, and there is no design consequence to ordering two hundred instead of three hundred, though three hundred of one size is priced a band lower.

What we do ask for is art built at the size you picked. A design made for the three inch and then shrunk to the one and a half inch loses its smallest type first, and the smallest type is often exactly the line naming the place. Lay out each size separately rather than scaling one file.

Full color is standard, so a watercolor crest, a photograph and a two color monogram all cost the same per button. Only the size and the count move the price.

If you are running the whole event

You want a number you can put in a proposal and not revisit. Take the size, multiply by the head count, add the one shipping figure from the tier table, and that is the line item. It does not need a quantity assumption or a footnote.

If you are hosting a shower

You are probably ordering one design in one size and you want it to look considered rather than novelty. The one and a half inch with a clean monogram and a date is the version most hosts land on, and it doubles as the place card marker.

If you are the couple doing this yourselves

Put the sizes you need on one order rather than three. Shipping is charged on the total button count across the order, so one order carrying all five sizes pays a single shipping figure instead of three, while the per button prices stay exactly as listed.

If you are a stationer or calligrapher

Your files usually already carry the right hierarchy. The only adjustment worth making is bumping the place name up a step, for the reason described above about the two similar names in this part of the township.

Questions from planners and hosts

Our wedding is in Lloyd Harbor but our mailing address reads as Huntington. Does that change what we pay? No. Shipping is priced from the total number of buttons on the order, not from the address it goes to. The tier table is the whole calculation.

Can we print Lloyd Harbor on the face so guests do not read it as Cold Spring Harbor? Yes, and we would encourage setting it as the dominant line rather than as a small subtitle. At favor size, a small place name is the first thing a guest misreads.

We have 240 guests for a Lloyd Harbor wedding. What is the total? At the one and a half inch size that is $362.40 in buttons, plus $14.99 flat shipping, so $377.39 before tax.

If our Lloyd Harbor count rises from 240 to 260, does the per button price improve? It does, in three steps. 240 of one size pays 20 percent under the listed rate and 260 of it pays 25 percent under the listed rate. The per button figure drops 20 percent at 100 of a size and keeps dropping at 250 and 500. What changes is shipping, which steps up from $14.99 to $19.99 once the order passes two hundred and fifty buttons.

Can one order cover a Lloyd Harbor ceremony and a rehearsal in Centerport? Yes. Put both designs and any mix of the five sizes on a single order. Each button is priced at its own size, and shipping is calculated once on the combined count.