Letter Perfect

Ideas & Inspiration

Letter Perfect

A wedding invitation is anything but an afterthought: It’s the inspiration for wedding themes and reception decorations. It’s an imprinted insight into a couple’s tastes and personalities. It’s the prenuptial precursor that every guest sees and remembers. Brides have more options than ever when it comes to creating invitations that sing. These days, they’re choosing personalized invitations and seeking unique designs and keepsake cards that express their individuality.  

Bejeweled
Paper is getting a serious makeover. With boutique design touching all areas of life, bold and bright invitations have entered the mainstream. “People aren’t afraid of color anymore,” says Amy Steil of Mi Mi Design, a Twin Cities wedding planning and design company. “For many couples, I’ve been pairing a lot of greens and blues together: grass-green paired with aqua or even light gray; pale gray paper with emerald-green ink—beautiful jewel-tones.”

Kimberley Yurkiewicz, owner of Letterbox in Minneapolis, says her clients are also experimenting with color choices. “Crane & Co. Stationery just developed this great new vivid apple-green paper that I’m nuts for,” Yurkiewicz says. “Purple can be utilized chicly or romantically and seems to be popping up all over. But my favorite right now is navy blue.” A classic shade, navy pairs naturally with almost any color and can act as a contemporary neutral for brides who don’t want to go all out with bright jewel tones. Yurkiewicz suggests paring navy with orange or raspberry for crisp, strong contrasts. “My husband and business partner also likes navy because it cuts some of the femininity of typical wedding invitations,” Yurkiewicz adds. “He thankfully brings in the valuable groom’s perspective when we’re designing new stuff.”

Book of Love
As much as invitations are about the bride and groom, they can also be a fun experience for the invitees. Sara Doherty of Crazy Daisy Design in Minneapolis says many couples are using multi-fold and pocketed invitations to create an interactive experience for guests. “Having a lot of folds or inserts allows you to present the invitation like a package or present of its own,” Doherty says. “It’s almost like a little presentation.”

At Letterbox, the accordion-fold invitation has been a sought-after favorite. “We offer old-fashioned pinhole perforating [think old-school postage stamps]—a cute and fun element, altering the original stock—that creates a tear-away RSVP card for the invitees to rip and then fill out to mail back,” Yurkiewicz says. “It’s a charming way to include your guests early on.”

Brides can also include pockets, ribbons and decorative paper in multi-fold designs. “We’re still really big into the pocket,” Doherty says. “It’s a neat way to present information, and it allows you to incorporate decorative papers that are really striking.”

Steil says she’s turned invitations into keepsakes for guests. “We’ve been doing four-page booklets with pages that include the invitation, reception info, accommodations,” she says. “It’s nice to have it all contained in one unit. It becomes more about the paper and construction.”

Signature Look  
From silhouettes and birds to trees and seashells, invitation graphics hold the signature stamps of the bride and groom. “We’re seeing a lot of people choose bolder graphics,” Doherty says. “Many are printed in copper. And we try to take hints of it to use in the RSVP card and the reception card. We don’t repeat it everywhere. But we pull a small bit of the design and carry it through.”

Steil designed invitations for a wedding at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis that included a snapshot of the original space before it went through extensive renovation. For another wedding in an old-fashioned barn, she etched a picture of the barn’s façade, which appeared on the invitations.

“I like to use imagery that reflects the space,” Steil says. “For outdoor weddings, perhaps there are trees. I do a lot of orchids. And patterns are unique visual elements that are like wallpaper. Some people do not want to commit to a bird or a particular ‘thing’ for the invitation. So they use more abstract patterns, which are always really nice.”

Of course, you can’t go wrong when you go with the signature stamp of  “white space.” It doesn’t mean you and your fiancé are boring—you’re just showing off your artistic flair. “Having white space allows for a clean, minimal design,” Yurkiewicz says. “You can have a simple motif rather than overlapping patterns and so much ‘noise’ on a single card. It’s a way to show off the gorgeous typesetting.” Wedding invitations are, after all, your very first impression. It pays to show off a bit.