Duly Noted — Local services in Fredericksburg

I'm upset to be writing this review. When my now-husband and I first started working with Chris, he was great. He's a super nice guy, and was so helpful when it came to designing our save the dates and our wedding invitations. He really listened to us and understood the vision we were going for, and he made it happen. We also had him design us thank you notes. The designs for everything turned out beautifully, and our stationary got a lot of compliments.

However, when it came time to finalize and order the invites, Chris was fairly slow to respond a lot of the time, and it led to our invites being sent out a little later than expected. It wasn't a huge delay, but not great. We then tried to work with him on some day-of stationary, but same thing, he was very slow to respond, and then he stopped responding altogether. All the while, we had been waiting months for our thank you notes; he originally didn't send them because of some weather, and then despite us asking constantly, they continued to sit in his shop.

After a few weeks of being completely ghosted, we got word from one his staff that he was out for a family emergency and that all projects were on hold. I can completely understand being away, especially for a family emergency, but the fact that there was no out of office message or immediate communication from staff was super off-putting. We were acting in good faith and had assumed that he was working on the things we had discussed, and we had sent two other couples his way who ended up having to design their own invites.

We ended up finding someone else to help us, but the fact that it's now been three months since our wedding and we just haven't heard a word from Chris has left a really sour taste in our mouth. If you choose to work with him for your stationary needs, everything will be beautiful, but the communication may not be the best, and you may be stuck having to find another option at the...

Along Georgetown’s commercial Wisconsin Avenue NW is the city’s go-to local paper goods shop. After working in media, the owner achieved his lifelong dream of opening a stationary store. Here’s why you should visit:

1. Goods: Unlike other stores that have a paper section but expand into other home products, Duly Noted doesn’t stray far from their mission. They sell journals, planners, greetings cards, stickers and more. They have a few goods outside of paper products like mugs and a few local food items, but the majority of the store focuses on paper products. A few standouts:

Letterpress cards. The owner sources it from local and regional companies.

Appointed journals. This D.C.-based, woman-owned company uses Duly Noted as a drop location for their custom journals and planners.

2. Price: Compared to other shops, the prices aren’t bad. A quality, local greeting card is around $5.

3. Location: It’s next to a large Compass Coffee and many other shops are nearby along Wisconsin Avenue and M Street NW.

4. Space: It’s in an inviting space and the products are organized well. It’s a full shop but doesn’t feel cluttered or overwhelming.

5. Passion: The owner is passionate about paper goods, attentive and answers any questions you may have.

6. Safety: Masks are required and a small table greets you when you walk in with hand sanitizer and...

It started out great last year when we asked Chris to help with our save the dates and wedding invitations. Our save the dates came out great and he was pleasant to work with. And that is where the issues started. We reached out again to get started with our wedding invitations. It was difficult to get in contact with Chris because he barely responded to our emails and texts. After a few painful weeks of communicating with him, we finally received our order of wedding invitations a month after he promised they would show up, and there were errors and printing problems. We were about a month out from the wedding at this point, so we didn't have time to do a reprint. We had to deal with the issues and just send them out. Chris promised me a discount on our thank you cards because of the issues. After our wedding, I contacted Chris about making thank you cards and he ghosted us. He never responded to us via email or text, so we ended up getting our thank you cards printed elsewhere. The invitations were expensive and not at all how we wanted them. I do NOT recommend using Duly Noted for your...