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Creating the wedding invitation suite of a local bride’s dreams

Some context

A couple’s wedding is one of the most important days of their life. Knowing this, anytime I work on a wedding project, I find it more important than ever to listen to my client’s goals. I am also aware of just how stressful it is to plan a wedding, with every detail needing to be just right. So, I make it my mission to relieve some of the couple’s stress by creating print-ready designs that reignite the excitement they feel about their big day. One of the best feelings to me is hearing from a bride that they loved what I did, and I helped make the design work one less thing to worry about.

The bride of this wedding was my coworker at Lufkin Printing. I had worked with her on many projects in the past, and she always started a new project with a clear idea of what she is looking for. For her wedding, she and her husband wanted to emphasize their country chic venue with a full set of thematic prints.

Establishing goals

The bride came to me initially with an image from a Pinterest post of a wedding invitation set, asking me to use this image as a design reference for the invitation suite. She later had her wedding photographer recreate the image with her own wedding prints and decorations. We have her and her photographer to thank for the amazing photographs on this page. The image she initially brought me became the reference image I kept looking back to throughout the many projects.

Stylistic analysis guiding creative decisions

Knowing she was looking for me to closely replicate this image as much as possible, I used it as a guide. Only having the one image to work with, I analyzed all the details as I always do, doing my best to replicate the feeling of the original image without knowing the particular fonts or colors to work with. From this I created a stylistic guide for the whole wedding, including:

Typography choices: unable to use my usual methods of identifying fonts due to image quality, I did a deep dive in search of the right fonts to work together on these prints.
Color choices: I worked closely with the bride to find the right shade of each color to best suit her wedding theme.
Multiple custom borders to be used on various prints: closely modeled after the original reference image with my own creative liberties taken when the quality left me unsure of what something was meant to look like.

A special thank you to the bride for providing photos from their wedding day!

This project had thorough creative direction with the client only needing assistance with stylistic guidelines and execution.
Closely guided by the bride’s vision, I created a stylistic guide that I went on to use to create all of her wedding prints, including:
- Defining typography to be used for the event
- Working with the bride to create the color palette
- Creating custom borders to tie prints together

Other services provided

In addition to the invitation suite, I also created multiple other prints for the wedding day, including a family cattle brand, letters to the wedding party, the welcome sign, coloring books, bottle labels for the groomsmen, koozies for the guests, and even seat reservation signs for family members that had passed before the wedding day.

In addition to my actual design work, I printed the welcome sign and assisted with the printing process of everything else to ensure that colors came out the perfect shade and to help avoid reprints.

Reflecting on my work

Designing for weddings is always incredibly fulfilling to me, especially as someone who is highly empathetic and loves to see the effect of my work. I thoroughly enjoy collaboration, especially so in cases where everyone is deeply invested in minute details like the exact shade of a color and which sans serif font feels right.

Both the bride and I were incredibly happy with how everything came out, and to this day I remain grateful to have had a hand bringing their wedding day together.