Lisa & Rostislav- Wedding Invitations

As a wedding gift for Lisa & Rostislav (aka Slava, a business associate of mine), I offered to design their wedding invitations for them.

Lisa & Slava had already purchased their wedding stationary, so that was a major factor in the design process. They had purchased a white, ink-jet printer friendly set from an office supply chain and got a great deal on it. So the goal for me in designing a package for them is to make something that doesn't look like a typical, home-made Microsoft Word design.

Lisa & Slava's Stock They Purchased

Lisa & Slava are getting married at the Waterfall Banquet and Conference Center in Claymont, Delaware. When starting their design process, the couple wanted to stick with a color scheme that would be easy to print themselves, so we stuck with a black and white/grayscale combo.

The critera they gave me in starting the process was:

1. They wanted a somewhat "modern" design.
   


2. They wanted to use a monogram that Slava had designed (and a great one at that!).
   


3. They wanted the font Monotype Corsiva to be used (which is in the monogram).

Being the couple didn't really have a set "theme" in mind, I decided to play with the idea of "waterfalls" in their design, which I figured was suiting considering the venue they were getting married at.

Below are the 3 designs they had to choose from. In the end they chose design #2.

Design #1

Design #2

Design #2 Response Card

Design #3

Aline & Brian- Wedding Invitations

Aline & Brian are getting married at the Breakers on the Ocean in Spring Lake, NJ. The Breakers on the Ocean is a beautiful hotel on the boardwalk of this historic New Jersey town.

When I first met with Aline to discuss their project, some key words she gave me to describe her wedding day and what she wanted to project in her invitation suite was:

1. Old Fashioned


2. Classic


3. Elegant
   

Another thing that stuck out in my mind while designing was Aline mentioned they had hired a trolly to transport the guests from the church to the reception site. That instantly conjured up images of the golden days of the boardwalk back the turn of the century. What a fantastic idea!

Aline's bridesmaid's are wearing slate color dresses, so slate became an obvious color choice in the design. To contrast the slate a bit, she decided on going with a silver color envelope to dress it up. To finish off the entire package, Aline will be wrapping the invitations with a ribbon belly band and a small sea shell, which will make for a very elegant, classic boardwalk invitation.

Below are the three original designs I made for the couple to choose from, as well as the design we produced for them. In my discussions with Aline some items she wanted to try to include in the designs were either an actual boardwalk, starfish, scrolls/paisley, the ocean and seahorses. So in the three designs I tried to hit each item she mentioned she liked in order to in the end have a fully customized piece the couple would love. Which one did they choose? The Boardwalk one of course!

Corrine & James- Preliminary Designs

When designing the stationary for my own wedding, I had a few design elements that were important to me to incorporate. I wanted my design to be:

1. Elegant
   
2. Modern
   
3. A Touch of Art Deco (to compliment my wedding venue, Oheka Castle in Huntington NY http://www.oheka.com/).
   

I had initally right off the bat in planning the wedding chose a color palatte of black, white, red and gold. I felt this scheme both representated myself and my husband as being edgy (red and black) yet elegant (white and gold). It also complimented the wedding venue as well as the season (Fall).

When choosing my stationary, due to budgetary constraints I knew in order to get the quality, textured paper I wanted I was going to have to cut costs on the printing end. So I decided to do everything with black text and graphics on white paper. One color printing is a fraction of the cost of full color (which uses 4 inks).

Next step was choosing the fonts that I wanted to represent my event. In this case I did some research on some recommended "Art Deco" fonts and finally settled on Goldenbook as my basic text font. I wanted to use a cursive font for anything I wanted to showcase, like our names on the invitation. My husband and I had decided we wanted to have a wedding website, and we chose Wedding Window as our vendor. Being a design snob I felt they had the best designs and the easiest to use interface. I found a beautiful website template that showcased all of my already chosen wedding colors, and the site used a beautiful cursive font called Sloop Script Two. So I thought, what better way to incorporate my pre-made cookie cutter website design into my stationary design! So Sloop Script Two ended up being my cursive font of choice in this design.

I managed to design and produce Save the Dates, a 5 piece Invitation Ensemble, Programs, Menus, Table Numbers and Escort Cards and get them all produced for the same price I was initally quoted for invitations alone by a fancy stationary shop in the NYC area. I even used the exact same paper/envelopes as the stationary shop, so I got a super, high quality design and cut the costs down dramatically.

Below is a sampling of my preliminary design work for my wedding stationary suite.