hand cancel?!

Since my fiance and i spent many countless hours on our invitations, we wanted to make sure it gets to everyone perfectly or at least not falling apart.. i heard from several ppl at work to hand cancel invitations, meaning i guess that they shouldn't go through the mail machinese and have roller marks on them, so we spent lots of time researching whether to hand cancel or what hand cancel is at the usps... when we first got there, the lady had told us it's an extra 20 cents an envelope, which is 2 - 10 cent stamps extra, they don't even provide a 20 cent stamp and we were to use these ugly stamps..  fine.. so i narrowed down the ones i wanted to hand cancel and she realized there weren't too many, so she just let it go.. since most of the ones within my city don't need the extra stamps..

then the next batch of invites, my fiance went to a different post office in the same city, to do hand cancel.. again they requested 2 - 10 cent stamps extra, they don't even provide a 20 cent stamp.. and this time the ones in the same city, they still charged the extra stamps.. so inconsistent!  so, he put the extra ugly stamps and gave it to the lady.. hoping that she would somehow hand cancel them..let's just say, she may have hand cancelled the invitations with the red round stamps, but they certainly went through the machinese still..  since one of my friend's invitation went from san mateo to san francisco and back to san mateo.. and you can tell that they went through the machinese since the envelope was compressed down and they were crinkled a bit..  so, brides out there trying to figure out whether to hand cancel or not.. it's basically pointless.. they just charge you extra without the service..  they should not offer this service if it still goes through the machines.. it def. wastes time and energy..