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Your Wedding Stationery – Everything You Need To Know

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This is a guest post by Dimitria Jordan, founder of Dimitria Jordan Luxury Stationery 
Dimitria designed the stationery above as seen in Natalie and Paul’s Jewish Wedding

{If you are a member of Smashing The Glass’s VIB Club, you can watch Dimitria’s video masterclass, ‘Everything You Need To Know About Your Wedding Stationery’ here}

Your wedding stationery sets the scene for your wedding day with your save the dates and / or invitations, and filters right through until the very end with your thank you cards. Your wedding stationery reflects you both as a couple and your style, and is the first glimpse guests will have of your special day! 
 
Below are some practical tips, useful ideas if you are unsure of the direction to go in, as well as the various printing techniques explained to guide you on your wedding stationery journey…
 

Dimitria Jordan
When should I make  a start on my wedding stationery?

My advice to all brides is to not underestimate timings for your wedding stationery. Once your venue is booked and you have a wedding date, I advise you to start looking for wedding stationers, and contacting those that suit your style and you would like to work with.

The design you choose (‘ready-to-order’ collection or bespoke) and the type of printing you decide on will affect the overall process, so it beneficial to make a start as soon as possible. As a minimum guideline, it’s best to make a start at least 6-8 weeks before you would like to send your save the dates or invitations to guests.

This ensures you can enjoy the whole process with your wedding stationer, discuss options and take your time rather than having to make rush decisions and having the extra stress of needing to send them out. You may also need to handwrite each guests name & address (a printed addressed envelope will take this job away!), add the postage and seal the envelope, which all take time too and is something to bear in mind.

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When should I post out my wedding stationery?

When you should post your wedding stationery will also give you an indication of when to make a start. There are varying guidelines for timelines, but listed below are general guidelines. If you decide against sending save the dates, you may wish to send out your invitation earlier than the time guidelines below… there is no right or wrong!Continue ReadingContinue Reading

How to Address Wedding Invitations + Envelope Etiquette

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This is a guest post by Jo Bryant, a wedding etiquette specialist

I recently met a newly-wed who was suffering from a common condition: post-wedding-and-honeymoon-blues. In a bid to cheer her up from the onset of dark evenings and the daily grind, we reminisced about her fabulous summer wedding.

We raved about her perfect country barn venue, amazing table of desserts, stunning understated floristry, adorable bridesmaids and comedy first dance, but we also recalled some of the trickier parts of her planning.

None of the disagreements were about the big stuff. In my experience, they rarely are. It seems that the pressures of planning and expectations of everyone involved can blow up over the smallest things.

For my friend, this was a standoff between her and her mother over how to write the guests’ names in the invitations. She wanted the simple option of using first names, but her mother was shocked at such ‘informality’ and was insisting on the Mr & Mrs route. This became one of their biggest cross-generational planning battles…

When it comes to the invitations, writing just ‘Tom and Jo’ (to use me and my husband as the example) is often seen as more suited to many couples’ wishes for a relaxed, informal day. That may be so, but don’t forget that the envelopes need to be written, so you will still have to face a potential minefield of modern forms of address.

Don’t panic! Here are my essential guidelines to help you avoid unnecessary stationery-stress.

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Sending a Signal

The first thing to consider is that the invitations offer the guests a first glimpse of the style and tone of the wedding. It makes sense, therefore, that the styling of the guests’ names is in keeping with nature of the wedding.

For a formal wedding with traditionally formal invitations, it may be most appropriate to opt for the ‘Mr & Mrs’ route. Similarly, first names for guests are best suited to invitations for a more casual day — particularly if the couple, rather than their parents, are the hosts.

That’s Just the Half of It

Once the decision of whether to use first names or a formal Mr & Mrs has been decided, there are many other quandaries to face. What goes on the envelope? What about including children? How to manage maiden names, Miss and Ms? Divorcés and widows? Someone may be a ‘Sir’ or a ‘Dr’. Then there is the tricky matter of the plus-ones (and do you even know their names?)…

Being Proper

If you want to stick to tradition, then the guests’ names on the invitation (and envelope) would be formally styled as the following:

Single man:  Mr Tom Bryant
Single woman:  Ms Jo Jones (see below)
Married couple:  Mr and Mrs Tom Bryant
Unmarried couple:  Mr Tom Bryant and Ms Jo Jones

how-to-address-wedding-invitation

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Basic Invite – Pushing the Envelope on Wedding Stationery

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My former life as a graphic designer – pre STG – was awash with Pantone references, fonts, typefaces and paper stock. A love you can’t take out of the girl it seems. So when it comes to wedding invitations, I’m the first in line to coo over a sassy design, a bold choice of colour, thoughtful monogramming, the texture of the invite and the weight of an envelope.     And believe me attention, individuality and quality never go unnoticed.

It’s important to set the tone for your big day and nothing builds anticipation better than the invitation.   It’s the movie trailer, the pre-promote and the amuse bouche to tantalise your guests.

Just as e-commerce for luxury fashion goods has developed over the last decade – think Net a Porter – so too have online destinations for luxury, customised, wedding stationery.

And Basic Invite is one of the best I’ve seen.

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Every paper product you could possibly need

It’s an elegant, online hub for all things printed and wedding –  save the date, invitations, RSVP cards, menus, programs, and thank you cards. And I love that it covers the whole gamut because it’s so important to pull all the threads of your wedding together and coordinate your paper products into one look – it is your brand after all.   But it’s also an incredibly efficient way of organising such an important aspect of the big day, without compromising on style.   Quite honestly, it sometimes feels as though you could make a full time job out of wedding preparation, that is on top of your actual job, so at STG we welcome style-conscious efficiency whole—heartedly.

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Andrew & Elliott | Uber-Stylish Soirée Wedding at One Marylebone, London

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Today you lucky readers get not one but two lovely grooms who together organised an incredibly entertaining (think confetti canons, swing band, full-on Shirley Bassey wedding entrance)  and glamorous black tie wedding in the heart of London’s West End. Their story is full of phenomenal detail, useful tips, fabulous eye-candy and impeccable style.

Andrew, originally from Australia, is an Operations Director for a boutique London creative agency,   and Elliott is a Client Relationship Manager for a global investment manager. They met in Melbourne, whilst Elliott was traveling for work, and the rest, as they say, is history.

With their wedding being very much a joint planning effort (and boy was there a lot of planning), the account of their double groom w-day is recounted in both their words:
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AN EXCUSE TO THROW THE BEST PARTY WE COULD IMAGINE
Andrew + Elliott: As well as being a celebration of our Civil Partnership we always wanted our day to be a celebration for our friends and an excuse to throw the best party that we could imagine.   For a venue, we imagined a lavish stately home [with Andrew being from Australia, he had always had the grand notion to have a lavish party in a stately home or palace (somewhere older than the 225 years of his colonised country)], but in keeping with the idea of it being a party for friends we were also adamant that we wanted a Central London location so that guests didn’t need to plan accommodation or travel.   Free from needing to marry in a “place of worship” we also wanted the ceremony and reception in the same venue so that there was one less travel logistic for our guests and us.

The problem we faced with a lot of the Central London properties available was that they were either sterile, were just another banqueting room in a grand hotel or were private member clubs with dominating dà©cor that would stop any chance of us adding our own personal touches.   We started with a list of over 30 properties that could accommodate 100 guests. We researched via the web and various venue guides and then shortlisted around half a dozen that seemed to meet most of our requirements.
ONE MARYLEBONE GLAM WEDDING LONDON
Off we trotted to spec out the various venues on the shortlist after work or on weekends. Several we wrote-off without even entering the building, others were excluded because of silly charges and inflexible terms and conditions.   One, in particular, we rather liked but we didn’t gel with the event planner — her creativity extended only as far as suggesting neon pink lighting because this was a gay event!   We were becoming slightly worried that our expectations were too high.   We started to reconsider the stately home alternative.   We unconsidered it again and armed with a bottle of wine we sat down and spent another evening reconsidering venues that we had previously ruled out (thinking we should at least go and inspect them as we were only reliant on photos from the web). A late addition was One Marylebone, which a good friend of ours had recommended.
ONE MARYLEBONE GLAM WEDDING LONDON
WOWED BY ONE MARYLEBONE
We went to see One Marylebone one wintery evening after a stressful day at work, and apart from being wowed by the beauty of the building we immediately hit it off with Alicia, their fabulous event planner.   We’d barely taken our coats off and already her suggestions were filling us with inspiration.   We knew there and then that One Marylebone was the right venue — as an event space it was new enough that we would be original, as a venue it is awe inspiring and needs little additional decoration and, above all, we knew Alicia would make our day into what we wanted it to be!

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