Diana,
over the course of the past 10 years, I've tried everything from printing in-house to trying out most of the labs and right now I post my images on either Instaprints or Collages and fulfill them through White House Custom Color (WHCC). WHCC is higher than some, less expensive than others but they offer a wide range of products and their quality is superb. I've only had one print issue with them in the 2 years I've been using them and they corrected it, reprinted it for free and mailed it out at their expense. Turnaround time is generally same day.

When you shoot dog shows, you have a lot of fulfillment for the 200 individual orders you send out. If you print it yourself and stuff envelopes, it's just a lot of time that could more productively be used making more images. And, frankly, I'm not sure I really saved any money once I add up the materials needed to do it all in-house.

Now, for portrait work, there isn't as much involved in terms of fulfillment volume but you still don't need to be involved in the backend of the process.

Weddings are like dog shows in terms of the number of orders you get following the event so posting the images on Collages -- on a custom web page -- makes the ordering much easier for all the non-Bride&Groom orders. We handle the bride & groom face-to-face with proof books as well.

Be careful with sites like SmugMug. The images can be right-clicked off of those sites with no watermarks and at full resolution. And I assure you it doesn't take long for folks to figure that out.

Jim