Aside from the stars walking down the red carpet, the most anticipated moment of the Oscars has to be that time when the presenter says “The envelope, please”. The Academy Awards is truly a day of luxury, from the designer clothes to the jaw-dropping nominee goodie bags and even down to the envelopes.

According to usatoday.com:

So, with the Academy Awards ceremony Sunday inLos Angeles, media coverage of all things Oscar includes a spotlight on the hundreds of gorgeous envelopes — each weighing a quarter-pound, each costing about $200, each requiring 110 hours to make by hand — that will contain the names of 121 nominees in 24 categories.

The Oscar envelopes are made by luxury stationer Marc Friedland Couture Communications in Los Angeles and Tom Hanks was the first presenter to ever hold the Marc Friedland envelopes when it first came out at the 2011 Academy Awards ceremony.

Known as the “Tom Ford of stationery”, Marc Friedland Couture Communications has been supplying elaborate party and wedding invitations for A-list celebrities like Oprah Winfrey.

Here are more details of the plush Oscar envelopes:

• weigh 4 ounces
• chic Hollywood Regency style design
• made of metallic gold paper with red lacquered accents featuring the Oscar statuette
• hand-stamped in satin gold-leaf
• has a deeply debossed inset framing an ecru plaque with the name of each award category in charcoal ink
• a red satin ribbon embossed with a custom PriceWaterhouseCooper red-and-gold lacquered seal of authenticity
• designed to never malfunction

The large Oscar envelopes are so large, they are impossible to fit in a stylish clutch probably because they are really meant to be carried around, being as important as the statuette themselves.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-an-oscar-envelope-2013-2?op=1#ixzz2uNyosqva