Kate & Erick are Married!

First of all, I must send a huge thank you out to everyone who came and said "hi" yesterday at the Meet Your Maker Holiday Show. The show was a great success, and we had a much better turn out this time than at the one we did in November, so thank you to everyone who came!

Next up, I have a really pretty and very unique wedding invitation suite from earlier this year to show off to all of you! This suite was created for a New York City couple, Kate and Erick, who were married this past September in Middletown, Connecticut. Kate desired a simple, yet elegant invitation that really took advantage of all that the letterpress process has to offer. What we came up with was a gorgeous, single-color, A7 size wedding invitation and a 4bar size reply card, both with extensive blind embossing, and a set of coordinating envelopes for both pieces. You can see all four pieces in this invitation suite in the photo above and below is the invitation all by itself.

When Kate originally hired me to design her invitation suite, she showed me the digital file she had created for her lovely save-the-date cards. Kate and Erick's save-the-dates featured a really fun and whimsical honeybee and honeycomb pattern as well as some lovely fonts. We chose to utilize fonts that were very similar to the ones on the save-the-dates and continue the bee and honeycomb theme for the main invitation suite. These invitations were printed in chocolate brown ink and featured the bee motif at the top and the invitation text below. We chose a traditional layout and used a pretty script face for Kate and Erick's names and the "Cocktails, dinner and dancing to follow" line at the bottom, and a classic, roman, serif face for the rest of the text. In order to incorporate the honeycomb pattern we blind embossed the entire background of the invitation with little honeycomb hexagons. Now, let me tell you, blind embossing a pattern this large over an entire sheet, was no small feat. In order to do this we had to pull each invitation manually on a cylinder letterpress (rather than doing the blind embossing on our platen press) and register each and every sheet by hand for the embossing. Despite the extra work that this took, the embossed pattern turned out beautifully and really gave this invitation design an elegant and rich texture! Here are some detail photos so you can see the fonts, impression and blind embossing a little better:

For the invitation envelopes, Kate chose a European pointed flap envelope from Waste Not Paper in sage green to accompany her invitations. We custom lined these envelopes with a slightly darker green liner that we had offset printed with a white honeycomb pattern. We then letterpress printed Kate and Erick's return address and another honeybee with a little flight path on the back flap of each envelope. Check it out:

Here is Kate and Erick's reply card and reply card envelope. For the envelope, Kate chose to stick with the sage green color and we letterpress printed the couple's address and a little bit of the honeycomb pattern in chocolate brown ink on the front.

The reply card itself featured some more honeycomb-pattern-blind-embossing on the left side of the card, and another little brown honeybee with flight path letterpress printed over the top of the blind embossing. The card featured a line for the guests to write their names and then a place for them to indicate which event(s) they would be attending. Kate and Erick planned a Friday night welcome and a Sunday morning brunch, as well as their wedding ceremony and reception, which was held on a Saturday. They also included a space where guests could write in a song that they would dance to at the wedding reception.

One of my favorite things about this reply card is the little hexagon-shaped check boxes we used for the different options guests needed to indicate. It's such a small detail, but I love the way it ties in with all of the blind-embossed pattern that we created! It really goes to show that taking extra special attention to detail when designing a piece can really add so much to the finished package. Here is another detail photo so you can see more of the gorgeous blind embossing and the sweet honeybee!

I love how gorgeous, elegant, sweet, whimsical, classic and unique this wedding suite is, all at the same time! Kate and Erick were fabulous clients to work with and I imagine that their wedding this past September was really beautiful and amazing!

Thanks so much and congratulations Kate and Erick! All the best to you!

One more note for today: this week is the last week to order holiday cards from our Etsy Shop. If you'd like to order holiday cards, please place your order by this Saturday, December 19th in order to receive them by Christmas! Happy Holidays!