Wanderlust Cards

If you are Scottish you may want to have a thistle design to encompass your national flower symbol in your wedding theme, or you may just love thistles, but many of the thistle wedding stationery designs on the market can be a little too traditional looking and some I’ve seen are quite frankly dowdy!  However I came across this Modern Thistle wedding invitation from Wanderlust Cards who are indeed a Scottish company and I think they have designed a beautiful card with the simple thistle image and the couples names and wedding date printed on the plain wallett.  The thistle head has a little dusting of sparkle which unfortunately you can’t see from the photograph but I imagine it would finish off the simplicity of the design perfectly.  The inner card that has the details printed on has a tassle to remove it from the wallett and this tassle comes in a variety of colours to give you the flexibility to colour coordinate to your wedding colours.

eb1

This is the Hurley collection from eb1 and is perfect way to set a grand tone to your wedding day.  The simple floral pattern looks striking in this colourway but all their  designs are available in 28 colourways.  You can choose to have the wedding invitation supplied with a luxury wallet which features a matching satin ribbon as pictured above, or choose the simpler version of the day or evening inivation which also features a matching ribbon on the invite but without the wallet.  The invitations will have the guests names printed on them which I personally think is a brilliant idea when the text is part of the design of the card, the last thing you want to do is make any mistakes or worry that your handwriting isn’t up the the job!  What I also like about this supplier is that you can coordinate the entire wedding stationery range including a choice of name place card designs and napkin rings that have been designed to fit the style of the ranges perfectly.   

eb1

Click on an image below for more information about each design.

Wedding Invites

Here at Wedding Stationery Gallery we showcase lots of different wedding stationery suppiers who supply wedding invitations in various styles, designs and price brackets.  Now if you have searched all the wedding stationery suppiers and haven’t quite found what you are looking for or you have a simmering desire you create your own wedding invitations, but you just don’t know how you would go about designing and making your own wedding invitations, then this highly informative magazine Wedding Invites could be the thing for you.  It’s packed with ideas, inspiration, and information about how to go about making your own wedding stationery.  It comes with a CD rom worth £14.99 that has templates and designs for your whole range of wedding stationery.  It costs £9.99 which at first may sound alot for a magazine, but when you think that you spend half of that on just one wedding magazine that is usually stuffed with adverts and most of the useable material accounts for about a third of the magazine, you see that this magazine is actually pretty good value for money since it contains templates and all the information you need to make all your wedding stationery.  I had a little play around with the CD rom earlier and found it exceptionally easy to navigate around and use, and I am quite a technophobe!  I’m not usually one to recommend brides make their own wedding stationery unless they really know what they are getting into as many do think it will be a lot easier and quicker than they anticipate, but if you are prepared to think ahead and organise yourself with the tools and get some advice via a tool such as this magazine then it will be much easier (and cheaper) than just going to Hobbycraft and buying anything that catches your eye.

I am not sure the reasoning behind the change of name as ido-print.co.uk becomes ido-personalise.co.uk recently. The name is owned by leading wedding stationery publishers CCA Occasions and I guess the brand name change was made to underpin the key selling point behind the trading name. The thing that sets ido-personalise.co.uk apart from the rest is the way that the customer can personalise their stationery online. CCA Occasions have invested a lot of time and money into developing Pageflex technology. There are many companies that let you personalise your stationery online but these almost always rely on some manual proofsetting after you have placed your order. These suppliers will usually have to send you a pdf to show you the exact layout and spacing and to show you what your chosen font and ink colour will look like. Some may even need to mock up an actual card for you with your chosen design and wording. This is not the case with ido-personalise.co.uk where they really do leave the work to you when it comes to preparing your cards for print.

Invitation self proofing at Ido-personalise.co.uk

This is of course not to everyones taste and some people may prefer the personal touch and some feedback as to their choice of wording and etiquette. For those however, who want a no fuss, order and forget about it approach, to ordering their stationery then sharing the proof burden up front may be the perfect option. Ido-personalise does give you a handful of suggested wording layouts and covers the popular choices of parents hosting or bride and groom hosting their own etc. You then have the tools to drag, drop and add text etc and convert your work into a printable pdf for proofing more carefully. There is no going back and once you have approved your proof and paid for your order there is a good chance it will be running through the digital presses in CCA Occasion’s Preston factory within a few hours. It is doubly important therefore to check for spelling and grammatical errors again and again. Let your partner or friend check for you as well because it is so easy to become proof blind to an obvious error even after checking through yourself several times. Another paid of eyes reading your wording for the first time can save you a costly reprint bill down the line.

All of the designs at Ido-personalise are printed on a digital press and have a glossy finish. Many of them let you incorporate the bride and groom’s name on to the front of the card in “Moonpig style” fashion. This an original approach to wedding card design but unfortunatly there is little originality between different items with a range and you will tend to find that the only thing that may differentiation an invitation, reply card and Order of service is that size of the board it is printed on. There is also no finishing touches or extra processes on offer so you will not find any foiling, embossing, die cutting, laser cutting, raised ink, ribbons embellishments etc etc that other companies often use to add a luxury finish. CCA Occasions will be quick to point out however that they do have a portfolio of other brands that cater for these tastes more than adequately and Ido-personalise cater for quick printed contemporary designs at a reasonable price. In fact, price is one thing they are generous with and this is no surprise since they are leaving a lot of the hardwork to you when it come to proofing your order. Ido-personalise.co.uk is a recent addition to our Wedding Voucher Codes site (click on the banner to the right) where we may have a promotional code running to save you even more on your stationery.

Love2print

There are some wedding stationery designs that you just don’t quite get the full effect of until you see them ‘in the flesh’, and this is one such design.  Whilst the photography is very good on the website for Love2print, you don’t quite get the full impact of this card unless you can see it in front of you.  I have the said design in front of me and it really is a strikingly simple and beautiful card.  The peacock feather printed onto cream card is available in dark green and burnt orange and the text is printed in the same colour which is carried through into the backing card as well to give just a hint of colour.  The gold ribbon that separates the image from the text really brings the colour to life and complements the earthy tones perfectly.  The cost of the individual invitations varies depending on the quantity ordered and have a higher discount on larger quantities, but to give you an idea the cost for 50 invitations is £133.00 which is £2.66 each.

Ditsy Chic

If vintage romance is the theme for your wedding then these delightful Vintage Birdcage wedding invitations by Ditsy Chic are the perfect way to invite your guests and give them a taster of what the day will be like.  The cards are personalised on the front with the bride and grooms initials on the heart and the names are printed below the birdcage.  This is an unashamedly romantic card with the delicate birdcage, butterflies and hearts and the beautiful lace detailing.  A little bit of sparkle (every bride needs some) is acheived with just a few little diamontes to finish of this gloriously vintage chic invitation. 

These wallet invitations cost £4.95 from Ditsy Chic and this includes an information card, RSVP and envelope.

Bride and Groom Direct Promotional Code

Bride and Groom Direct already have a year round fantastic saving of 5% off all their wedding stationery simply by ordering online instead of their brochure (which is regularly bundled with the leading bridal magazines such and You and Your Wedding and Brides).  Now, is a great time to save even more because this is a quiet time of year for wedding invitation suppliers.  Most brides are getting married at this time of year rather than sending out invitations and wedding card printers will have to wait until after Christmas before their printing presses are running at full capacity again.

What does this mean to the wedding shopper?  First and foremost it means bigger savings can be made during the Autumn / Winter months and if you were not planning on sending out your wedding invitations until after Christmas then it can pay to purchase them and simply wait until you are ready to send them.  Bride and Groom Direct have just released a new promotional code that will get you 10% off all their stationery and accessories.  That is 10% on top of the 5% online discount that is always in place.  This is a limited time promotional code which is valid until for 1 month only but if you check out the Bride and Direct offers page at Wedding Voucher Codes you will always have the latest promo codes at your fingertips.

Lilac Rose Tree by Paper Hello

When wedding stationery suppliers talk about their designs being bespoke or customisable then that usually means that they come in different colours or maybe even let you add the bride and groom’s name on the front.  Paper Hello have taken the concept to a new level and I was impressed at the attention to detail that they extend to their customers.

The design above is called Rose Tree and, yes, you can have a different colour theme (A rather fetching duck egg alternative viewable on the Paper Hello site transforms this design into a traditional English country house style reminiscent of a 1950’s inspired Cath Kidston creation).  The bride and grooms names too can of course be changed (The only Kiki I know sang that infamous duet with Elton John).  That’s where most wedding suppliers would draw a line on customisation.  After all, changing the colour or standard text of a design can usually achieved with a few clicks of the mouse.    Now, how about changing the two characters so that they look more like the bride and groom or what about the mode of transport…. horse and carriage perhaps rather than bicycle ?  What about the card itself ?  How about an A6 Postcard style rather than the square format shown.  These are the types of changes that Paper Hello invite you to make when they talk about bespoke wedding stationery.  There are extra charges to be made for having your stationery so personal to you but with base prices starting at just £1.99 per invitation there is plenty of room for manoeuvre for such a personal service.

The nearlyweds - Not a 70's sitcom but a funky range of Invitations

I have to be honest, I have never been much in favour of vector art graphics for wedding stationery. I often see the bold lines and shapes of vector art on free image stock websites for which looks like as though they have been drawn up by a student in their first week of graphic design class. With wedding stationery I often find this style from print shops because they realise that you can easily scale a vector graphic from a Place Card to an Order of Service without losing quality.

Anyway, after that moany start, I will continue by saying that The Nearlyweds do not fall into the dodgy vector art category and are a shining example of what can be achieved with computer aided design. Their vector art is some of the most original I have seen and perfect for the bride looking for some chic, funky wedding stationery.

At first I thought the printers at The Nearlyweds were trying to conserve their materials costs by limiting the ink pallette to pink, white and black. Pink is all you see see when you visit their funky web site. What you might not realise until you delve a little deeper is that all the designs are available in different colourways which is a welcome sight. Some of their designs are a little too cutesy for my liking and remind me of the Bubblegum brand of stationery that Collisons have recently (and thankfully) discontinued, but the bold shapes and style of their butterfly and floral designs work very well. Best of all is that all designs have the added bonus of allowing the bride and grooms names to be printed on the front to make your design set truly unique.

Free samples are available from The Nearlyweds however it does not look as though you can specify exactly which sample you get. I think that their reasoning behind this is that because card stock and print quality is probably the same across all designs then individual samples are not necessary.