save the dates and letterpress invitations

The invitations you choose can really set the tone for your event, whether it be a wedding or other occasion.

Nowadays many people send out a “Save the Date” up to a year in advance of the wedding, particularly where they are expecting overseas guests, so if you want matching Save the Dates you may need to choose your invitation suite long before the other details of your big day have been finalised.

One option is to send out a “Save the Date” card that may not necessarily match your invitations. This is the option that we took. Not being sure what theme we were going to go with and having just had some gorgeous engagement photos taken by our photographer, Samm Blake, we handmade our invitations which consisted of a photo printed on a piece of textured white card, tied with a piece of twine to a piece of brown kraft card containing date, location and accommodation details for our guests. We found small brown kraft envelopes to match.

Once we had decided that the theme for our wedding was going to be something like “Vintage French”, we began researching invitations. This can be very overwhelming! There are just so many options available, particularly if you are looking online.

We knew that we wanted letterpress invitations and we knew that we wanted something fairly neutral as we were not having a colour scheme as such and planned on using a lot of greys and natural, earthy colours. We found lots of invitations that we liked, but couldn’t find one that was exactly what we wanted.

That’s when we came across Shayna Norwood from Steel Petal Press. Based in Chicago, Steel Petal Press makes all sorts of lovely letterpress paper products and specialises in custom design wedding invitations. Armed with the vague details I had provided as to what we wanted and a description of what our wedding day was going to be like, Shayna set about designing our invitations. We had initially worried about her being based in Chicago and us being all the way over here on the other side of the world in Perth, but it was surprisingly easy to go back and forth by email and it was easy to send her picture examples of invitations and patterns that we liked.

I think you will agree that she did an amazing job of coming up with something that met our brief – vintage themed, neutral colours and using a pattern (I love the use of patterns in letterpress as they really emphasis the texture) which incorporated a fleur-de-lis shape, keeping in line with our French theme. The colours actually tied in really well with our Save the Dates as well.

Stay tuned for more on Steel Petal Press and a Q&A with Shayna next week!