Gold Foil Card Stock

Just a fairly short post today to talk about our wedding stationery. This might not be a particularly exciting topic for everyone, but for me, there is something about a nice bit of card stock that gets me going. I scrolled Pinterest for hours looking at other people’s invitation designs and envelopes, collecting inspiration, and then it was time to create our own.

Being a fairly crafty person, I had decided that I wanted to cut as many costs as possible when it came to certain parts of our wedding. Anything that I thought I could do myself rather than hire somebody to do, I did. This included designing our wedding stationery.

I’m by no means a graphic designer – I know my way around a few programs and dabbled making websites and graphics as a teenager, but it’s something that I’ll turn my hand to every now and then when it’s called for. Miguel and I decided that between us we could come up with something we’d be proud to send out to our guests.

I knew I wanted something classic that wouldn’t look super dated when I looked back in years to come, so we stuck with pastel tones and gold foiling. In retrospect I wondered if perhaps we should have been a little more adventurous, but I think what we came up with fit the wedding quite nicely.

I started trying to sketch out a “logo”, our names written out that I could use across various elements. But lots of screwed up paper later, I came to the conclusion that I was never going to be happy with the calligraphy I was producing. There was something about writing my own name, coupled with the pressure of it being for something so important, that made it all feel a little futile. I could write another couples name out without a problem, but Carrie Miguel? Not a chance. So, I decided to get in touch with a wonderful calligrapher, Lauren Saylor, and commissioned her to create our ‘logo’ for us instead. We loved what she came up with.

Once I’d put together all of the elements for the invitations, guest booklet, menus and a little DJ request card, it was time to send them off to the printers.

Because we wanted gold foiling, and because I’m a bit of stickler for quality when it comes to these things, we enlisted the help of Avenue Litho who I found on Google. Printing with gold foil cost a lot more than I had originally anticipated due to the nature of the production, but if there were a small handful of things that I didn’t want to compromise on for the wedding, stationery would be included, so we bit the bullet and totally loved the results.

So my wonderful idea of creating our stationery by ourselves “on the cheap” didn’t exactly go as planned, but I wouldn’t have changed it. I know it won’t be top priority for a lot of people, and there are so many places to get your hands on beautiful pre-designed invitations (if you’re getting married anytime soon, definitely check out minted.com!), but it was another element of the day that I was so keen to put my own stamp on.

Literally in some ways..! We even had a stamp made out of Lauren’s calligraphy, and used it on drawstring bags to create little ‘welcome packs’ for our guests that we gave them when they arrived in Portugal. Inside we included a little note, a postcard, a mini Herb Lester guide to Lisbon and some traditional Portuguese products.

Keep an eye out if you’re a bride-to-be that’s as excited about wedding stationery as I am! I’ll be posting a guide to addressing your envelopes next week with a little help from Chiara of Lamplighter London (a little preview on the envelope photographed above!).

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