tellme

One of the more filigree pieces in tellme's wedding range is a card called Herzblätter, a heart cut from paper with a laser rather than a blade, and the studio's own production page states plainly what that costs in time: cutting out this one heart takes up to 15 minutes. Elsewhere on the same site, the team describes what a very intricate motif in general can demand of the machine: their lasercutter can run for up to 2 hours to finish a batch of just 10 cards. Nothing about the process is automated start to finish. Once the laser has cut a card, someone checks it for flaws and picks off, by hand, the scorch marks and stray unshed bits of paper the cut leaves behind, before it can even go into an envelope. That is the whole case for calling this place a Kartenmanufaktur, a card manufactory, rather than a print shop: the laser does the precision cutting, people do the finishing, and both stages happen in the same building in Meilen, on the shore of Lake Zurich.

Wedding cards are one occasion among many that get the same treatment. Open tellme's own wedding-card shop page and its "Anlass" (occasion) filter lists Hochzeit as just one of 17 tags, sitting alphabetically between Glückwunsch and Kindergeburtstag, alongside Dank, Einladungen, Firmung & Kommunion, Geburt, Geburtstag, Genesung, Liebe, Muttertag, Neujahr, Ostern, Taufe, Trauer and Weihnachten. The business also runs a dedicated Leidzirkulare service, designing, printing and mailing funeral notices, entirely separate from the cheerful end of the catalogue and its own thing to get right. Its photo-book line covers a wedding album alongside a travel book, a company-history book and a personal life-story book. None of that makes tellme a poor choice for wedding stationery. It does mean a couple booking here is one customer among the shop's birthday-card buyers, its bereaved families and its corporate clients, not the reason the operation exists.

The company's own timeline has 3 different starting points, and they don't quite agree with each other. The About page states that Sandra De Coppi founded "tellme Atelier für das individuelle Buch" in 2006, that the business was extended with tellme Grafikdesign & Fotografie GmbH in 2014, and that the atelier itself has sat at its current address, Hüniweg 14 in Meilen, only since 2017; before that it worked out of a converted storage room in a farmhouse with no insulation and no central heating. The company's registered seat, per its own Impressum, is a separate address entirely, Dollikerstrasse 2 in Uetikon am See. The homepage, though, opens its section on the manufaktur with a different claim: "Seit 2013 verbinden wir in unserer Manufaktur in Meilen filigrane Lasercut- und präzise Stanztechniken..." (since 2013 we have combined filigree laser-cut and precise die-cut techniques in our Meilen manufaktur), which puts laser production running in Meilen 4 years before the About page's own move date. Nothing on the site resolves the gap. What is consistent everywhere is that this is a small, long-running family operation, not a wedding-industry newcomer chasing a trend.

3 different products share one Hochzeit tab

The most direct of the 3 is the shop itself: finished wedding greeting cards, priced between CHF 13.90 and CHF 21.90 apiece, in a spread of laser-cut and printed designs, a plain "mr & mrs" card at CHF 13.90, a foil-and-glitter heart at CHF 15.90, the filigree Herzblätter at CHF 21.90 among them. These are sold as ready designs a couple or a guest can simply buy, though the shop's own FAQ says the same cards can also be personalised with a couple's own colours, paper and photos on request, rather than treating "off the shelf" and "customisable" as opposites.

Separate from that is a bespoke consultation service, reached through its own page, for a full wedding paper suite: invitations that can run to several pages, save-the-dates, thank-you cards, menu and bar cards, handkerchief ribbon rolls and on-the-day signage, finished with the same in-house laser cutting plus embossing, and personalised with ribbons, cords or tags in felt, paper or wood. There is no shop cart here and no listed price. The page's only calls to action are to book a consultation at the atelier, with evening and Saturday appointments offered, or to send an enquiry. Nothing published states a minimum order, a proof or revision count, or a lead time in days or weeks for this bespoke line, and that gap runs across the whole site rather than sitting on one missed page: tellme's general terms only promise to keep delivery "as short as possible" and call any date mentioned in an order confirmation non-binding.

The third product is a wedding photo book, sold under the name Flatbook. It prints with pigment ink on matte, acid-free, age-resistant paper, binds by hand so pages sit flat, and offers a choice of cover in bookbinder's board, paper or fabric (a fabric cover can even carry a printed photograph), plain or embossed, open or closed spine. The pictured books run 270 by 340 mm. Price depends on page and photo count; the one figure tellme publishes is CHF 2500 for a 90-page book holding 50 photos, with a fuller quote available on request, and no minimum print run is stated for it either, the same as the cards. 2 of the site's own pages disagree on where the binding happens, though: the wedding-book page itself says the whole book is printed, made and hand-bound "in unserem Atelier" (in our atelier), while the separate pricing page says it is made in-house and then hand-bound "im Appenzell", a different canton entirely. Both pages are current. It is worth knowing before assuming every stage happens at the Meilen address.

Paying, shipping and the small print

tellme takes credit card (Mastercard or Visa), ApplePay, GPay, SamsungPay and Twint, and only charges a card once the order is confirmed. Domestic shipping is free above a CHF 100 order; below that, letter post costs CHF 2.90, parcel post runs CHF 12.50 to CHF 13.50 depending on class, and express delivery is CHF 27.00, all stated as including 8.1 percent VAT. The same page prices shipping to Germany, Austria, Italy and France, its own "Zone 1", from CHF 8.50 for a letter under 350g up to CHF 31.00 for a 2000g parcel, with anything heavier priced individually. That price list sits oddly next to the general terms, which state the site's offer is addressed exclusively to consumers domiciled in Switzerland, while the shop clearly quotes rates into 4 neighbouring countries in practice. A couple ordering from further away, the UK or overseas, would do well to ask directly before assuming checkout will take the order. A 10-calendar-day right of withdrawal applies once goods arrive, refunds go out within 20 calendar days, and an overdue invoice carries 5 percent annual interest plus a reminder fee capped at CHF 20.

Language is worth flagging on its own. The site runs in German only: no English or French version, no switcher anywhere in the navigation, and the page markup itself is tagged German throughout. What it does offer, on the product side, is a text-language filter on the wedding-card shop reading Deutsch, Englisch, Französisch and ohne Text (without text), so the printed message on a card can be set in English even where the shopping experience around it cannot. Whether that flexibility carries into the bespoke consultation for a full invitation suite isn't stated anywhere; a couple should ask directly before booking a Saturday appointment expecting to run it in English.

Also worth naming: the About page describes a partnership with a "geschützte Werkstatt," a sheltered workshop that finishes and packages the cards for tellme. It is a small, specific detail that says something real about who is behind a finished card, beyond the studio's own 8 named team members on that same page, the atelier dog Toto among them.

What's proven, and what still needs a phone call

tellme is exactly what its own name for itself claims: a working manufaktur with a laser cutter and a finishing bench doing real, checkable production, on cards that cost CHF 13.90 to CHF 21.90 off the shelf, or a photo book at CHF 2500 for a stated page and photo count, both with no minimum order attached. What it isn't is a wedding specialist. A couple gets the same laser cutter, the same design team and the same no-minimum policy that a birthday card or a funeral notice gets here, plus a bespoke consultation line for the paper a shelf card can't cover and a hand-bound album for after the day itself. The prices, the shipping bands and the withdrawal terms are published in plain figures rather than left to a phone call, which is unusual in this category. What's missing is any commitment on turnaround time for a bespoke order, and a straight answer on whether English carries past the printed card and into the consultation itself.