How important is your wedding stationary?
Well, in my opinion – VERY! It’s the bridge between your guests and your big day. The moment they open that precious envelope is the moment they feel joy and happiness for being invited to be part of your special day. It’s the moment they are introduced to your wedding theme. It’s the moment they get a glance of what your day will be like.
To me, the effort put into the wedding stationary sets the benchmark for the rest of the celebrations. Casual stationary suggests casual wedding, luxury stationary suggests luxury wedding and so on.
Whatever your plans are, make the most of sending out the save the dates and invites, and use it as a way of announcing exactly what your big day is going to be like.
Design your own or buy off the shelf?
There are so many amazing options out there for you to choose from. Personally, I was always going to have mine designed. I love being different and I love having something that is completely my own. Designing my wedding stationary from scratch made it that little bit more special.
If this isn’t something you want to do then don’t worry. Perhaps you’ve had a whirlwind wedding and only have a few weeks to get the invite out, or perhaps you found the perfect wedding stationary online and don’t see the point creating your own, either way there are some amazing places to buy wedding stationary.
I particularity love Not On The Highstreet. No matter what your budget is, they have everything you need to create the most amazing wedding.
Designing your own will most likely work out more expensive than buying off the shelf, however there are clever things you can do to reduce the costs.
- Do you know a graphic designer? A friend or family member could be the perfect solution and you could ask them to design the stationary as your wedding gift.
- Contact the local college or university. You never know what a student will do for work experience or work to put in their portfolio. If they won’t do it for free, then I’m sure they will be pretty cheap.
- Make your own. Invites don’t have to be professionally printed. Go to your local craft shop and buy some quirky card and trims and get glueing!
- Shop the sales!! If you have plenty of time, then you will most likely come across a few sales before the big day. Plan ahead and you could find some real bargains.
- Social media. Get on twitter and ask around. Someone out there may have used an amazing value service that they don’t mind sharing with you.
If you decide to design your own stationary, it’s really important to have a theme in mind. This may not necessarily be the theme of your wedding, but you need something for the designer to go on. This could be anything from colour, font, a time and place, decade, or county.
My theme is a bit blurry, but it’s there! What I mean by blurry is, there are a couple of themes merged together.
1920s/Hollywood/Oscars/Movies is my theme. So anything from The Great Gatsby to Bugsy Malone. Marilyn Monroe to Angelina Jolie. If it’s glamorous it’s ok!
The theme came to me the day I found my wedding dress, and it came by accident. Looking at myself in the mirror, wearing my ‘dream’ dress, I said “I feel like I’m going to the oscars, not a wedding”. There it was, the lightbulb moment. There was my theme.
Getting married in December, very close to Christmas everyone thought I would have a winter theme. Which, yes, initially I was. However, it just didn’t feel different enough. I wanted my theme to stand out. Be something unique and special. With the theme I have now, I can mix fur shrugs, pearls, feathers and crystals to create the most glamorous and luxurious 1920’s/Oscars inspired ‘winter’ wedding. Perfect.
I hope this post has helped you decide what sort of stationary you want for your wedding, feel free to comment if you have any questions! I love my invites and have been so excited to share them with everyone! Above are my save the date cards. Stay tuned for my next post telling you all about my ceremony and evening invites and more!
Alex xx