By Jo Francisco
A LEEDS couple were left heartbroken after wedding guests had to pay Royal Mail to receive their own invites.
Charlotte Findlow and fiance Darrel Walker had spent hours crafting their lovingly designed wedding invites – only for them to be held back for being too big.
Instead, most of the 100 guests had to go to their local Post Office and pay £1.06 for their own invite.
But a Royal Mail spokesman said that since August 2006, UK postage prices have been based on the size of an item as well as its weight.
The couple believe they have racked up a £530 bill for both the invites themselves and the postage.
Darrel, 37, has written to all the guests explaining the problem and apologising for the inconvenience.
Charlotte, 30, of Cookridge, said: "I feel so embarrassed! I feel very let down because I think it's a matter of opinion. We put so much work into it.
"My partner had to write a letter and apologise. We have had to pay more to send the letters out. It's just ridiculous."
It seems the invites and envelopes were acceptable but a wafer-thin ribbon wrapped around pushed the invitations over the size limit.
Charlotte, who works in advertising, said she measured the A6 cards using a template at work before sending them out.
"It does go through the template, you just had to give it a bit of a push because of the ribbon around it."
Charlotte had designed the cards together with Darrel who works in printing.
"We had been designing them for weeks but putting them together took three of us, all day on Sunday."
When they finished, they posted 100 invites with first class stamps on each one.
"I got a phone call from my dad saying they had to go and pay for it as it was described as a parcel and they had to pay £1.06 to go and collect it."
Only three invites have so far been received by guests without a problem.
A Royal Mail spokesman said mail is priced in three sizes: letter, large letter and packet.
"Without seeing the invitations and envelopes we can't say for certain but can only assume that, unfortunately, the items had underpaid postage as they fell into the large letter rather than letter category.
"For the vast majority of cards the letter size applies. For larger cards with any dimension over 240mm long or 165mm wide or 5mm thick, or over 100g in weight, the large letter rate applies.
"If a recipient wishes to receive an underpaid item of mail, they must pay the amount of underpaid postage plus a handling fee. The £1 surcharge goes towards our additional handling costs, including returning the item to the delivery office, storage, and administration.
"Underpaid postage amounts to millions of pounds each year and surcharging doesn't cover our costs, loses us money and is the last thing we want to do."
For more details, customers can visit www.royalmail.com/size, call 08457 740 740 or ask at any post office
I hope the wife doesn't see this 
.......I don't know what came over me, as the actress said to the bishop.
