eliart

Open eliart's wedding invitation page and scroll to the bottom: the footer still reads "eliart Geburtskarten aus Luzern", birth cards from Lucerne, the same line that closes every other page on the site regardless of what it's selling. That is not a template the studio forgot to swap out. The homepage says outright that "birth and thank you cards are where everything simply began," and that they have "remained the eye-catcher, and also the specialty of eliart," even as the range grew to include weddings, stickers, mourning cards, postcards, graphic design and photography. Wedding cards and wedding thank-you cards sit as 2 entries in that longer list, never singled out the way the birth cards are, and the footer on the wedding page itself is the quiet proof of it.

2 items on a much longer list

What eliart actually sells for a wedding is narrow: a wedding invitation card (Hochzeitskarten) and a matching wedding thank-you card (Dankeskarten Hochzeit), plus envelopes. The invitation comes in 5 format options: 2-page landscape, 2-page square, a portrait fold available in either 2 or 4 pages, 4-page landscape and 4-page square. The thank-you card offers the same 4 non-portrait options and drops the portrait fold. Paper is mostly a satin-finish or an offset stock (the offset papers the studio uses for its standard cards run around 300gsm), though it also works in genuine kraft paper, recycled paper and a lighter natural stock on request. Real kraft paper comes with a trade-off eliart is upfront about: white ink barely prints on it, or costs a lot more to print, so anything that needs white, pale colours or photos on a kraft-style card usually goes onto a kraft-look finish printed digitally onto ordinary white paper instead. That keeps every colour available but leaves a faint sheen the true kraft stock does not have.

Nothing here gets ordered with a click

There is no shopping cart. Every enquiry and order runs by email, something the site calls a "flexible cart" and defends as slower than a checkout button but better suited to genuinely custom work. The page eliart itself labels "shop" is really a category index, not a product catalogue: it lists the same product names as the homepage and routes every one of them back to an email address and a contact form. A couple can either pick an existing sample design and ask for it adapted, or bring their own idea, colours, fonts and layout from scratch; eliart says outright that it runs no automated designs. Getting a quote means filling out a short list of prompts, names, quantities, wording, whether envelopes are wanted and in what finish, and emailing it in.

2 delivery windows, and they do not agree

eliart's own terms of business set the default response time: without a special arrangement, a first design proposal comes back within 1 to 2 working days of placing an order, and the FAQ adds that a same-day turnaround within a few hours sometimes happens too. What happens after a couple gives final sign-off (eliart calls it "Gut zum Druck", the go-ahead to print) is less consistent across the site's own pages. The process page for birth cards states that printing and shipping take 2 to 4 working days from that sign-off, and offers a slower option at 9 to 10 days in exchange for what it calls a substantial price reduction. The FAQ, on the same site, states that shipping within Switzerland "mostly" takes 1 to 3 working days after the same sign-off. Neither page defers to the other, and nothing here resolves which figure a wedding order should expect, so both are worth knowing rather than picking one and presenting it as certain. A printed sample card before committing to an order is not included either way: eliart used to offer this free, stopped for unstated reasons, and now charges a minimum of CHF 25 for one. Small tweaks to a design in progress are part of the normal back-and-forth at no extra charge, but the FAQ and the terms both note that larger changes, especially ones requested after the order is already placed (format, layout, colour, typeface), can carry additional cost billed by the time it takes, with no rate published.

What the price list would say, if eliart published one

It does not, for weddings or for anything else. The site is direct about why: with formats, papers, quantities and finishes this open-ended, it says fixed prices are hard to publish, especially since discounts come up often enough that a flat number would misrepresent what most people end up paying. Every quote goes out by email once a couple has described what they want. The one hard figure published anywhere on the site is for a different product: an individual birth card costs CHF 3 to 5 each from 100 pieces upward, plus shipping. Nothing comparable is published for a wedding invitation or a wedding thank-you card, and that birth-card figure should not be read across to a product it was never quoted against. There is likewise no stated minimum order quantity anywhere on the site, for weddings or otherwise; the 100-piece line above is a price anchor for birth cards, not a floor a couple has to clear.

What is published, in the terms rather than the marketing copy, is what happens around the edges of an order. A quote stays valid for 1 week. Cancelling after placing an order costs a minimum of CHF 100 for administrative work and whatever design work is already underway, plus a further CHF 100 for the booking itself going unfulfilled. Design and print files stay eliart's property; a finished layout can later turn up as an anonymised reference on the site, but a couple does not get the working files themselves. Anything wrong with a delivered order needs to be reported within 48 hours of receiving it, and invoices are due within 30 days. Payment runs through Twint, PayPal, a bank transfer, or an emailed or paper invoice, whichever a couple prefers.

A 2-person print shop behind every order

Everything eliart prints, weddings included, goes through one long-standing local partner: a small printing business it describes as a family-run, 2-person operation. Orders are grouped into a shared print run the site calls "Sammeldruck", explicitly to cut down on waste, which is also the reason it gives for why delivery takes the time it does rather than shipping the same day. Every paper it uses is FSC-certified. Nowhere on the site does eliart mention letterpress, foil stamping or hand calligraphy; what it describes, in some detail, is a satin or offset print run handled digitally through that partner shop, with kraft paper and the kraft-look finish as the 2 textured alternatives to the standard stock. Some of its typefaces started as hand lettering before being digitised in house, which is as close as the site comes to a calligraphy service, and it is offered as a font, not as ink on the page.

Written for guests already in Switzerland

Every page checked here, the homepage, both wedding pages, the process page and the FAQ, is in German only. No language switcher or English copy turned up anywhere on the site. The FAQ also answers one question relevant to this tenant's readers directly: eliart does not ship abroad. It describes itself as a purely Swiss company that distributes its printed goods exclusively within Switzerland. For a couple planning a wedding from outside the country, that is worth knowing before writing an email in English and expecting an invitation to land at a home address. It will not, and any correspondence should assume German on the other end unless the couple can manage it themselves. That is a real limitation for a foreign or destination couple, though not a disqualifying one for anyone with a Swiss address to send to: a venue, a wedding planner, or family already on the ground.

eliart never rebrands itself for a wedding order. The invitation page keeps the same birth-card footer as everything else on the site, and that consistency is the most honest thing about the studio: a couple hiring it is hiring a birth-card atelier that will run its usual process, email only, one design draft, a partner printer's shared batch run, against a wedding brief rather than a print house built specifically around one. That gets a couple real custom design work and a small local printer rather than a template. What it does not get them is English correspondence or anything posted past the Swiss border, and either of those can rule this one out before the design conversation even starts.