Your wedding stationery is often the first glimpse guests have into the feel of your wedding – your save-the-dates and formal invitations share your colour theme, wedding vibe and personality with guests-to-be. So you want wedding stationery that reflects you as a couple and, importantly, your wedding stationery needs to be consistent with everything else you have planned for your big day. Sending out super-formal save-the-dates and then planning to get married on a beach? Confusing! Opting for bright colours on your invitation when, in fact, you want guests to wear black and white? Baffling! To help you navigate the tricky world of wedding stationery, I’ve put together the top seven things I learnt while creating my own stationery. (You can get a sneak peak at my wedding invitations by scrolling through the gallery above.)
1 What’s your couple ID?
As a couple, are you laidback and easygoing, or do you both love dressing up? First things first, sit down with your fiancé and write down key words that describe you as a couple. For Franz and I, these included: fun, colourful, semi-formal, organised, thorough, party, thoughtful. We then used this brainstorm to direct our ideas for our stationery: a playful, cursive font to reflect our fun personality; bright colours to reflect our love of colour; detailed information for guests, to reflect our organised and thorough nature; something that gave a hint of formality (for us, this meant including a more sophisticated font along with a playful, cursive font); and a simple, easy-to-read format (we didn’t want a million different pieces of paper or a complicated, fold-out invitation design). Now you’ve got a good idea what’s important to incorporate in your stationery as a couple – it’s really great when guests feel that your stationery reflects both of you.
2 What’s your decor theme?
As a couple, discuss the colours and decor elements you want at your wedding. I knew early on that I wanted a turquoise and pink colour theme, which Franz agreed with – so we wanted to introduce this to our guests via our stationery. Consistent colours and visuals from your save-the-dates through to your table decor ensure your wedding feels polished, intentional and pulled together. So until you’ve discussed decor ideas, don’t start printing that stationery!
3 What kind of a wedding are you having?
If you’re having a laidback beach wedding followed by an informal cocktails and canapé reception, and your dream is for your guests to kick off their shoes and dance the night away, then set the tone with stationery that reflects this. For example, you’ll be steering clear of overly-formal fonts like calligraphy, and your save-the-date and invitation wording is unlikely to follow the traditional, ‘You are cordially invited…’ wording.
By contrast, Franz and I were set on having a formal, three-course seated meal, preceded by a traditional, religious wedding ceremony. To give guests the right expectation of our big day, we incorporated some traditional wording in our invitation, and we included elements like a dress code, to ensure everyone was on the same page.
4 Should you go printed or electronic?
This one will depend entirely on how formal you’re planning for your wedding to be, and on your budget. Electronic invitations are an eco-friendly, efficient, budget-happy way to send out save-the-dates and invitations (guests can RSVP instantly!), but they may not suit a more traditional wedding. Also, consider what’s important to you: Franz and I spent years writing letters to each other, as part of our long-distance relationship, so a paper invitation posted out to guests was particularly sentimental to us. But if you’re looking for an easy way to cut costs that won’t affect quality, sending save-the-dates and invitations via email is a great way to go. Some great sites for electronic invitations: E-Invites, All Designs and Paperless Post.
5 What’s the most important information you want to share with guests?
Anyone who knows Franz and I knows that we’re both sticklers for detail. We’ve both attended weddings where we’d had no idea of the dress code, or exactly what time to be seated for the ceremony, or whether we needed to bring cash for the bar… so we were adamant that our invitations would outline as much information to help our guests as possible. Yes, it meant our invitations were a little text heavy (hey, I’m a writer!), but we wanted our guests to feel totally prepared for kicking back on our big day. So, if you want guests to wear a certain colour, tell them! Or if you’re worried about people running late, don’t just give a time for the ceremony – give them a time to be seated and ready by. Show a draft of your invitation to objective friends and family before printing, and ask if anything feels unclear or uncertain to them – then add detail to clarify.
6 What other stationery will you be needing?
Are you planning to print name tags, menus, orders of service or anything else? If so, you’ll want your stationery design to be the same throughout – create elements that are easy to incorporate across a range of pieces. Franz and I asked our designer (a talented friend of mine, Lucy Geel – you can contact her about creating your wedding stationery by emailing [email protected]) to create a monogram of our names that we could easily use across our save-the-dates, invitations, menus and more. We’re even had our monogram embroidered onto our napkins, thanks to another generous and talented friend of ours, Renate Taljard (email her at [email protected] for embroidery, linen and dressmaking in Cape Town). So fun, so effective and so easy!
Our napkins, using the monogram from our stationery.
7 Do your research!
Sites like Pinterest mean you don’t have to come up with great ideas all by yourself – I stole ideas from plenty of other creative brides, from the wording on our invitations to the shape, size and design. Visit GLAMOUR’s Pinterest site here, and pin away to your heart’s content.
Share your wedding stationery with us! Tweet pics of your invitations to @GLAMOUR_sa with #GLAMWedding to share, or pin your favourite stationery ideas with GLAMOUR on Pinterest.
Sarah Browning, 24, is the managing editor of GLAMOUR. She moved to SA from London three years ago and lives in Cape Town. In this #GLAMWedding Wedding Blog, Sarah’s sharing her wedding-planning journey with you. Join the conversation! Tweet your thoughts to Sarah via @GLAMOUR_sa using #GLAMWedding.
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahmbrowning
Find out more about the #GLAMWedding blog here!
