Wedding Invites Archives – Page 2 of 5

Graphic Martha’s Vineyard suite

October 9, 2013

Martha’s Vineyard is literally one of my favorite places for a weekend getaway, family vacation and of course, for a wedding. There is something extremely old world about only being able to arrive via boat; it’s lends itself to a certain romance. I also appreciate Martha’s Vineyard for it’s versatile of style. I’ve done a few Vineyard weddings now and each one is more different than the next. With many different personalities, the Vineyard really lends itself to inspired designs.

Our new Vineyard suite is going in a more graphic direction. I’ve been having a moment with this style of design over the course of the last year. As much as I love hand illustrating, digital illustration also creates a great look. Inspired by retro travel posters, this suite embraces the classic red and blues that are so traditionally nautical and puts a modern spin on them. The illustration style is very graphic but then distressed a bit in photoshop to add a rustic element to it.

With this suite, we focused on the idea of a moment. Each piece in this suite focuses on a different Vineyard moment. Collectively, it tells the story of “their” Martha’s Vineyard. The map is always a fan fav {I personally love Jaws just hanging in the bottom right corner- classic!} I really love this suite for it’s personality and bold, graphic style.

PS- Hey Christine! Thanks for reading

Lake Tahoe Wedding :: Kristen + Austin

September 23, 2013

Wahoo! This is one of my absolute favorite suites from 2013 so far. I may be biased as it was done for my lovely sister and new brother-in-law, but nepotism aside, this is still a goody!

This suite was inspired by 1950’s Lake Tahoe with a modern twist: so think Rat Pack, martinis and camping in retro cabins under the stars. Tahoe is notoriously blue so it was natural to have cobalt blue be the star of the show. The bold yellow color complimented the blue and helped play into the 50’s inspiration.

When it came to the invitation, Kristen had wanted to do something with wood to represent the nature of Tahoe. I found an amazing vendor to laser engrave these on double thick wood. It was a great touch and the invites actually smelled a bit like firewood which was an awesome bonus element! With the RSVP card, we wanted it to feel like a post card you would grab when traveling through the area on vacation.

Kristen and Austin had wanted to do an extra element to help tie suite together. When we were brainstorming, we came up with the idea of doing an actual patch like you might get at camp. I ended up working with a great vendor who created the patches (2.5″ x 2.5″) with actual iron on material on the back. Some guests even showed up with the patches adhered to their outfits- brilliant!

My favorite element is the envelope liner. Lake Tahoe is the second deepest Lake in the country so I thought it might be cool to highlight that with a depth chart. Depth charts aren’t exactly the most exciting thing but by using different shades of cobalt and placing it against the clean white paper, it was a great design element that really added to the suite.

Since this was a destination wedding, we wanted the save the date to act as an incentive package to guests. I created a two fold brochure filled with fun facts about Tahoe as well as travel details, hotel info. and more. With destination weddings, the save the dates always end up being a bit more important as guests need to book early.

For the day of elements, we played with cocktail napkins, drink stirrers, buttons, custom kazoos (weird, but fun!) “Keep Tahoe Blue” stickers and silk screened tote bags. I’m a firm believer that the day of elements really help round out the event. It’s such a fun way to bring all the great details from your save the date and invite into the actual big day!

Check it out on Oh So Beautiful Paper today!

the lovely couple and the Lake that inspired the suite

Classic Casino

August 23, 2013

I love when someone’s venue really drives the inspiration for their suite. Brynn and Scott were married this past May at the Canfield Casino right in the heart of charming downtown Saratoga Springs, New York. When you hear Casino, most likely you think of Vegas and or a sad river boat… fear not my friends! This “Casino” is a classic, gorgeous historical building that once functioned as a Casino and is now owned by the city of Saratoga and is a historical landmark. Brynn really wanted their invitation suite to reflect the amazing venue while still having a slight nod to the history of the Casino.

The entire suite is flat printed on Ecru Crane Lettra stock. The invite was duplexed to be 220# while the other pieces are on 110# stock. Brynn had the idea to do a very delicate pattern for the liner/ back of the card that was made up of playing card symbols. She wanted to create a central motif to carry throughout the suite as well as her day of items so we came up with the idea of doing a poker chip {for her day of, she actually made real chips for her place cards- so smart!} for her logo. The fonts in this piece are equally as important as the artwork as they work hard to create a certain feeling. My favorite piece is the RSVP playing card- such a fun touch! We incorporated small moments of gold in the liners and the RSVP envelope which is always an affordable way to get a bit of shine without breaking the budget.

This suite makes me want to grab a cocktail, wear a sparkly dress and attempt to gamble a few clams!

Ali + Sean :: Cape May Wedding

August 2, 2013

Sometimes the stars align and you just click with your clients and all is right in the little world of stationery. This reigns true for Ali and Sean who were one of my absolute favorite client’s from last years wedding season. The couple had a fantastic beach inspired wedding in their adopted home of Cape May, New Jersey with all the fixins. I worked closely with the ridiculously talented Ara {from Rock, Paper, Scissors} and it was a match made in wedding heaven. We crafted all the little details for their big day from their save the dates all the way down to a custom coaster set for each guest {inspired by Ali and Sean’s favorite locations in Cape May}. It was a total pleasure to work with such a wonderful couple and talented team who brought the entire event together.

Ali and Sean’s wedding was featured on Style Me Pretty today, click here to see more of their beautiful day and details from SCD!

{all photos below via Style Me Pretty; taken by the photo wonder, Trent Bailey}

Andy Warhol inspired wedding invites

July 9, 2013

I remember sitting in my high school art class and my teacher {hey Mr. Coughlin!} started educating us a little bit about art history and some of the “superstars” of the art world. As a suburban kid growing up without a terrible amount of culture, my favorite artists were limited to the likes of Mary Engelbreit… {I had an entire WALL dedicated to her illustrations!} I remember after that particular class a fire was lit and I wanted to know everything about art history. My strongest memory from that class was seeing Andy Warhol’s Cambell’s Soup Cans for the first time. Ever since then, I’ve always had a soft spot for pop art.

When Mel and Phil came to me with the idea to do a Andy Warhol inspired suite, I signed on ASAP. The couple got married at the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburgh last June. Mel and Phil wanted the suite to be moments of high concept and low, minimal design. We chose to do an unassuming kraft envelope with an electric Warhol inspired pattern liner of none other than their pup. For the invite and details card, we kept the design and typefaces super clean and modern; leaving plenty of white space. For the RSVP, Mel and Phil had the great idea of using a classic Warhol quote and one of their engagement photographs. I took the pic into Photoshop and played with it a bit so it had an interesting, reproduced effect. I love the contrast of bold colors with clean white space. This feels like the perfect homage to Mr. Warhol {and a pretty creative couple as well!}

Illustrated Napa Valley Wedding

June 7, 2013

Napa Valley could quite possibly be one of the most beautiful places for a wedding. With it’s Tuscan style landscape, it makes any wedding feel romantic and at the risk of sounding completely corny, kind of magical. Our amazing clients, Becca and Jon, got married there in St. Helena, California last June. We were lucky enough to work closely with their planner Rosemary Hattenbach, of Rosemary Events, to come up with an inspired suite that captured the clients personalities {and their pup!} as well as their amazing venue. The couple was married in a renovated barn called “Barbara’s Barn” complete with amazing landscapes and views as well as an epic skull wall {I know, sounds weird but it’s kind of amazing}. On the back of their main invitations, I created an illustration of the barn with their pup, Taz, sitting in front ready to welcome everyone. Rosemary’s vision for the big day included lots of pops of red which we introduced in the invitation suite. The RSVP card includes Taz again running along the bottom of the card with the quintessential wedding cans behind him. One of my favorite details is how the cans wrap around to the back of the RSVP card. The wedding itself was full of games since Becca and Jon love to play all kinds of sports, board games, etc. On the bottom of the schedule card, I drew a picture of Becca and Jon playing croquet to play off the game theme. My favorite detail is the envelope liner, I drew two horseshoes together and below we have one of the best lines that has ever graced a wedding invitation: “coming to our wedding is the best idea… ever.” Genius. The pieces in this suite play off one another very nicely creating a light, welcoming invitation to get the guests ready for their weekend in Napa.

Kraft + Coral: A Florida Wedding

April 25, 2013

I know we’ve all seen a lot of kraft paper these days but, man, I still kind of just love it. Julie was one of our clients from last year who came to me with a very distinct vision. She knew she wanted to screen print white ink on kraft paper and to pair that with hand lettering and illustrations. With that as our inspiration, I set out to create a fun suite that incorporated her whimsical vision. Julie collaborated with the amazing Megan of Makewells for the calligraphy on her envelopes. I absolutely love how it turned out! It was so inspired and complimented the suite. Julie sourced some amazing vintage stamps to pull the entire suite together. My favorite part is the coral envleope with the arrow and heart liner. It reminds me of my notebook doodles from seventh grade {add in some “JTT” references and we’d be all set}. Overall, I love how fun this suite is while still evoking the feel of a Florida wedding.

Classic Martha’s Vineyard Wedding

April 10, 2013

Sometimes a client tells you about their wedding and you kind of just want to scheme a way to get invited… that was pretty much the case with Sarah and Todd. They had an amazing wedding on Martha’s Vineyard over Labor Day weekend last year. The weekend started with a welcome party at the Bride’s family’s home followed by a Lobster Bake on Friday evening {with custom bibs- amazing} and a lovely wedding ceremony at the Allen Farm in Chilmark on Saturday night. For Sarah’s invites, she wanted them to feel nautical and reminiscent of the Vineyard without having them feel over the top in any one direction. For her invites we created a clean, letterpress invitation with lots of negative space. My favorite element are the blind impressed seagulls in the top right hand corner- so charming. Sarah wanted everything to feel contained so we put all the pieces in a cream invitation folder that matched back to then main and RSVP envelope. When it came to her envelope liner, we had used a vintage MV map on their save the dates and decided to repurpose that here for a sense of continuity, which I loved. Overall, I love how clean and open this suite feels while still evoking the warm, special feeling of a Vineyard wedding.

My wedding invites!

March 19, 2013

I am so excited to share my very own wedding invites on my blog today. After spending the last few years designing for others, it was a surreal experience to be my own {potentially worst} client. Nole, from the amazing blog Oh So Beautiful Paper, shared our invites yesterday but here is a little recap. And by little I mean really long winded, my apologies in advance.

Our invites were quite possibly the hardest thing I had to do for my wedding. Given the fact that I design wedding invitations for a living, there was a bit of “gentle ribbing” from friends and family about their expectations. And frankly, designing for yourself is very hard! We didn’t really have a theme going into our wedding but one thing that kept coming up was music and the colors black and white. Our save the date was based on the Rob Base song “It Takes Two” so we weren’t afraid to get a little weird. For the actual wedding, I used a line from a Biggie song that ended up being a repeating theme throughout our invites and day of pieces.

I knew I wanted the invite to be focused around a hand drawn illustration since that is what I love to do. We got married in the DUBMO neighborhood of Brooklyn which has some pretty awesome views. There is one iconic street that showcases the Manhattan Bridge with the Empire State Building nestled below; I chose that as our main image to draw. The invitation was printed in two parts then duplexed to #220 and printed on Crane Lettra. One of the important things for me was to have the invite sound like how we both actually speak. We have a very dry sense of humor and we really wanted that to come out in our copy.

For the RSVP card, I created a mini-letterpress record complete with glassine sleeve. I paired this up with a petite black, square envelope and had our return address letterpressed in matte silver on the front. The record was little, roughly 4″ x 4″ so it was easy enough for our guests to ship back to us.

My personal favorite detail was the envelope liner! My friend is a photographer and when looking through her pictures, I saw one of a guy with knuckle tattoos. As soon as I saw that, I knew I wanted to incorporate that same idea into our suite somehow. One I realized that “BROOKLYN” fit on the knuckles, it was a done deal! I really had my heart set on black envelopes so I knew addressing them would be an issue. In came the ridiculously talented Jenna of Love, Jenna calligraphy. She created the perfect look for our suite complete with little details to match back to our design.

We did not do a wedding website but instead provided our guests with an insert chalk full of how to spend a perfect winter weekend in NYC + Brooklyn. This was printed flat on kraft paper.

I finished the suite off with a black + gold twine {from the awesome Knot + Bow} and had a die cut tag created to hold everything together. I love little silhouettes and create one of our hair to use throughout our suite as a continual theme. Overall, we wanted our invites to feel classic, set the tone for our wedding but most importantly to make our friends and family laugh.

The last few bits are from some of our day of elements that we snuck into this shoot. I hope you like everything!

Modern Brooklyn Invites: Lauren and Jay

March 14, 2013

Hello! Back from the depths of the design underworld. I’ve been keeping my head and pen down over the last few weeks leaving this poor little blog in the dust. But alas, we are back!

I have been wanting to share Lauren and Jay’s wedding invitations since they were still in the proof form! Lauren and Jay {stars of our comic book save the date} had a blow out bash at Brooklyn’s The Green Building back in October. When I say this bride left no stone unturned, I mean it. She dotted every I and crossed every T when it came to this wedding which made designing her suite incredibly easy. Lauren kept it pretty simple in terms of the overall look but killed it with the details. She knew right away that she wanted to have them letterpress printed. I drew a brick pattern that played off the look of The Green Building and had that blind impressed over the entire invite. Next up, we kept the typefaces very clean and simple. At first glance, it might come off as a very minimal invite but the more you dive in, the more the piece comes together. Lauren was using a “vampy” Cranberry for a punch of color so we had the edges painted with that detail in mind. Next up- the envelopes! Lauren had her heart set on using the very talented Love, Jenna for her envelopes and I have to say, she could not have done a better job! Jenna even added her touch on the invite by adding the “and” to the main piece. Jenna was inspired by Lauren’s vampy punch color and calligraphed her envelopes with a deep Cranberry color that worked incredibly well. We had her return address letterpressed using a matte gold for a little added luxe. We also lined both the main and return envelope with a soft gold liner. Lastly, Lauren sourced some of the cutest vintage stamps I’ve seen tying this entire piece together with a bit of charm.

{looking forward to sharing Lauren + Jay’s day of pictures soon, taken by the super talented Trent Bailey Photography}