Just Paper & Tea

Just Paper & Tea was one of the best choices we made during the entire wedding process. They were quite different from other shops around DC in that they were a two-​person show, not a mid-​size wedding factory. They were tailored to provide individual couples the support they needed to have a great wedding. It should also be noted that they were featured as an American Express Small Business Shop. As an Art Director and Designer myself, I needed some production support, since I was designing an entire invitation suite, including invites, menu cards, thank you cards and a host of other collateral. They provided outstanding consultation and production. They’re paper product line was also amazing with just the right styles to achieve a specific look. Caroline not only provided extensive ideas and technical know how, but was also a great consultant on planning a wedding. We had no idea what we were doing, however, with their support the process was made quite simple. Her and Nick were some of the sweetest people we met out of all our vendors. They became more than just vendors to us… They became friends. We would ask them questions that only wedding experts would know. They would response with the utmost respect and know how… and eventually leave us to discuss options. We highly recommend Just Paper & Tea for not only for your invitation suite but perhaps as outside consultants for planning the perfect wedding.

An alternative to Papyrus, Just Paper & Tea is an independent paper shop in Georgetown. I found this place while strolling the neighborhood with my friend who lives in DC.
I love paper. I know that sounds weird (it feels weird typing that sentence out), but it’s true. I thought Just Paper & Tea had unique stationary sets and cards. It also sells stamp sets, which I thought were pretty cool. It’s a small shop, and the people who work there were friendly and answered my questions about their goods. There’s also a tea section (I didn’t buy any teas though).
I think it’s a nice shop to drop in and look around. You might find something that sparks your interest or imagination.

After visiting Georgetown where Just Paper and Tea is located, my soon-​to-​be husband and I knew that we needed to do business with Nick and Carolyn. We are from Ohio and shopped for our orders online, which was surprisingly easy. Nick and Carolyn were wonderful to work with, accommodating, and gave great suggestions, such as the type of font we should use when it was written over a picture. The high quality of the paper, quick process, and hand addressed envelopes will keep us coming back to the store. Not only did we order our wedding invitations from Just Paper and Tea, but we also ordered our baby announcement a year later. We couldn’t be happier with their products and service and will return for all of our stationary needs.

A lot of Georgetown shops are a bit snooty, but I was so happy to find the owner of Just Paper & Tea to be extremely friendly and helpful. The selection of paper/​writing products isn’t huge, but I found exactly what I was looking for at a reasonable price.

I had the pleasure of meeting Nick and Carolyn as I searched for a local shop to find and print my wedding suite. I am a visual person and needed to touch, see and feel my invitations. With no appointment, My planner and I waltzed into Just Paper and Tea. Instantly, I fell in love with the quaint but full of character establishment. It encompasses two things that I love — paper and tea! Nick startled us with his greeting as we were feverishly looking at all the sample suites! He was informative, helpful and full of stories! We asked if we could meet w/​someone to review invitations and that’s when we met Carolyn! What a joy! Needless to say, my experience was awesome and I got the invitations that spoke to my heart! The added incentive was they were cost effective and all in line with my color scheme and theme! I love them! You will too!

This tiny little gem was not hard to find, once I pulled out google maps.
The moment you walk in, you feel like you’re about to get buried in stationary– and I loved it! We were greeted promptly and left alone to look around, which took all of five minutes. They carry various fine stationary and small writing-​related trinkets. They also have a nice selection of loose teas.
What really got me was their small but impressive selection of paper– I found myself a beautiful sheet of Italian paper.
The owner chatted with us a little bit and was lovely. I could hear a client in the back room discussing invitations, and there was light laughing.
The atmosphere is very charming and homey. The owner rolled my paper sheets neatly and wrapped them, and knowing I was going to be walking a lot, he put my paper in a shopping bag to try to protect it better.
I walked away giddy that I found such beautiful paper!
For a finer selection of papers and stationary (and some tea), I’d definitely say come here as oppose to that other larger chain down the street. You won’t be sorry, and you’d be supporting a small local business!

Hidden gem in upper Georgetown. The name says it all… except just how good the paper and tea actually are (answer: very).
I’m as far as you can get from a paper person, but the designs were beautiful, and I can see how anyone who still uses paper for any purpose would want to get it here — cards, stationary, you name it. It brings to mind something you’d imagine the British royal family using.
The crown jewel, though is the tea. They don’t serve it, but they sell both loose-​leaf tea and tea in sachets, aka a higher-​quality kind of bag. The tea selection is diverse and the owner seems like she really knows her stuff. I chatted to her for a while and she was both very friendly, and also bowled me over with her knowledge.
Can’t wait to go back.

I ordered my wedding invitations from Just Paper & Tea and would not recommend working with them on an important order. The invitations came in two weeks later than expected but, fortunately, I had ordered far enough in advance that this wasn’t a problem. I kept calling to see when they would arrive and the owner, Nick, kept saying they would be in any day. When they finally came in Nick said that the reason for the delay was that the print shop made a mistake and printed the first run in black so he had to have another run printed in my color choice, which was chocolate. He also said that my color was a custom order but that he had only charged me for standard. I didn’t understand why he hadn’t told me that before but I just thanked him for resolving the issue and for comping me the cost of the custom color.
I then sent the invitations to the calligrapher who notified me that I was short 8 invitations and they had not sent extra envelopes (which is standard practice to compensate for mistakes). I called up Nick and he said that that he printed the exact number that I requested. I informed him that I had sent him an email asking to increase the numbers well in advance of the order. He denied this at first and then, after checking, said that the message went into his spam folder. I asked him if we could run the additional number of invitations and, after calling the printer, he said that I would have to pay the setup fee again in addition to the print run… this almost doubled the cost of my entire invitation order. He did not offer to cut me a break on the cost and accepted no responsibility.
I then had my wedding planner call the printer directly on my behalf to see if they would consider waiving some of the fee. The printer said they would not waive the fee since it was not their mistake and they said they had already comped Just Paper & Tea on the first run of invitations that were printed in the wrong color. We found out that not only was it Nick’s mistake that they were printed in black the first time but that brown was not a custom color at all. He not only lied to cover his mistake but threw in an extra lie to make himself look good. I understand that mistakes happen but when they are combined with lack of ownership, poor customer service, and outright dishonesty it is not excusable.
In the end, I paid the additional set up fees to print the extra invitations and then took the rest of my stationery needs to another shop in Bethesda. I would never give Just Paper & Tea my business again and I hope to spare others from dealing with the unprofessional couple who operate this shop.
Oh, and there was one more oddity in my experience I should mention. Before I had even picked up my invitations, a friend of mine who was invited to the wedding mentioned that she had seen my invitations already. Apparently, she had stopped in to do some shopping and ended up in a conversation with Nick and my name came up. She told him that we were good friends and he offered to show her the order that had just come in. While the invitations were hardly a state secret I imagined that I old be the first to see them and I thought it demonstrated poor judgment and a lack of discretion to parade someone else’s order out for another customer to see without permission. But maybe that’s just me?

We purchased our wedding invitations from Just Paper & Tea– it is a beautiful little shop and we were so happy in the end with our invitations. However I had a lot of trouble getting responses from one of the store owners, Nick, as we were going through the process of ordering and making all those little decisions on color, font, paper stock, etc. And he was a bit pushy as we were trying to make our decision on which invitation to buy. I guess in the end its good he was pushy because he talked us into a very nice looking invitation– but I am always put off by store managers that push you as you are trying to make a decision! And we let him talk us into an invite that was well beyond our original price limit. (That is our fault though!)
This is not the place to go if you are looking for a bargain, but I would recommend this shop if you are looking for a nice, tasteful invitation.

This is the kind of charming independent business that I love to discover when I’m walking around the city. Another reviewer called the store «messy» but I consider that part of its character — tatty elegance like an overstuffed chair. I have not used JP&T for custom invitations, so I can only review the retail store.
The small space is chockablock full of boxed cards, «bulk» (sold by weight) paper in many colors, wrapping paper, gift items, and tea. I am always on the lookout for unique letterpress cards, and JP&T has a few; they are also the only local purveyor (that I know of) that carries Wren Press cards out of London, with a great selection of colors and motifs. Wren Press is pricier stuff and is kept in the glass case near the register.
Frankly I never noticed the tea on my first few visits, so I made a point of looking for it on my last visit. Yes, there are canisters of bulk tea on a couple of the walls. I didn’t pay close attention, but many of them looked like fruity tisanes or other «scented» teas, almost like potpourri. Aesthetically I prefer the tea presentation and selection at Teaism, Ching Ching Cha or even Teavana. Somehow a food-​and-​drink item seems out of place here among all the paper products. I’ll continue to come here for Just Paper, but probably not for Tea.

What a cute find off the beaten path of Wisconsin Ave. I had always wanted to stop in here because I’d only heard good things. The woman working there was really friendly & helpful even though I was only looking around. They have a great selection of top-​of-​the-​line stationary by Crane & Co. The loose tea selection was robust; I’ll definitely go back there to purchase some in the winter time. I’d gladly patronize Just Paper & Tea!

Wow, just wow.
I got my wedding invitations from this place, thinking that because they were small and on the expensive side, they would do a great job. I was wrong.
First, they didn’t quality control the postage, so invitations got returned to my mother. Then, after promising to fix it, and give me the agreed-​upon 13 extra invites so I could send out invitations to guests whose addresses I didn’t have originally, they didn’t give me the proper number of RSVP cards.
I was fed up so had my fiancé call to run down the invoice, which appeared to be wrong. It was right but it turns out that they actually had the capability to send out the extra invitations but hadn’t volunteered that.
The owners are super sweet and the invites were beautiful but the transaction left a really bad taste in my mouth. I ended up spending a ton of time on the invites — tracking down the missed ones, addressing the ones that I sent out, and dealing with reviewing the invoice, which I really didn’t want to do.

This is such a fun store! Really cozy feeling with lots of stationary, and tea! There are what seems like two sections to the store, the tea section is on the right hand side toward the back. The owner is knowledgeable, helpful and friendly. Of all the things I happened to find authentic Savon de Marseille soap here, which is so cool since I’ve been looking for this soap forever!

I ain’t no pansie or nuthin’, but umm there’s nothing like cute stationary to put a smile on someone’s face! I’m not talkin’ Hello Kitty; more like grown up, fancy schmancy stationary.
The staff here at Just Paper are very friendly and knowledgeable. Though I came here just to find Thank You notes and a birthday card, they also consult with couples and print things like wedding invitations and other formal correspondence. They don’t have much of a variety for such things like funny and clever birthday cards, though. I did say fancy earlier, right? They have paper from names like Vera Wang, Kate Spade and Crane & Co. Understandably, such things will fetch a premium price. It’s an itty bitty store, so it looks like all this premium paper is about to burst out the door. So walk gingerly in there.
I’m not sure where the ‘tea’ part comes in, ’cause I sure ’nuff didn’t see any. Oh well, wasn’t looking for tea in a paper store anywho.

For over ten years, we’ve shopped at Just Paper & Tea.
Nick and Carolyn, the owners, are simply marvelously talented people who really know what they are selling and know how best to give the highest value in terms of reasonable cost and impressive quality products.
Across the board, their inventory reflects well on them and as well on the savvy customer who opens their door for the first time or the hundredth time.

I love this store! The other paper stores in Georgetown are pretty generic, but this one definitely has character. They have an amazing collection of designer cards for custom invitations and announcements. Weddings are definitely their specialty. I browsed through some of their books and the invitations were so innovative! It was great to see how passionate the owners were about their products and really knew their stuff. I’ll definitely be back to create invitations.
While I was in the store, someone came in to buy teas – I didn’t even see their wall of teas at first, but looks like quite a diverse collection…

I like food, but I also like paper. Cute notebooks and notesets are my downfall and as a little girl I would spend much of my allowance buying up said things. Not much has changed over the years — «allowance» becoming «meager paycheck» and the Sanrio characters yielding to Japanese or Nordic prints. My partner in crime? Just Paper & Tea.
Only a couple doors down from Wisconsin on P, Just Paper & Tea can certainly make you feel like you’re not in the middle of Georgetown. The store is crammed tightly with all manner of stationery, paper, gifts, and tea. A giant dragon kite that the owner will inform you is a real, working kite, is attached to the ceiling making the space cozier than it already is. A small table in the second room might be occupied by a couple and a consultant, perhaps planning wedding invitations that the store can print for you. Not ready to make that sort of commitment? You can become distracted by the wall of tea from all around the world, which might work well with the noteset you found by Crane’s, or the cute letterpress card by Egg Press. There are many more companies and presses represented in the store, but I’ll let you discover them for yourself.
Of the boutiques in Georgetown, particular up Wisconsin, Just Paper & Tea is one of my favorites. It’s also wonderfully devoid of pretension — the owner was happy to talk to me for nearly twenty minutes even though I strolled in at five til five (their closing time) one afternoon. Stop in and stock up on stationery, but hopefully nothing too amazing that you won’t want to part with!