Tara Melvin April 11, 2018
Tara Melvin 
(Real Weddings by Perfect Planning Events • Photography – Evelyn Alas Photography)
Being invited to any occasion is an exuberant feeling. The recipient receives a beautiful envelope with their name on it saying, “You’re Invited”! And based on the invitation or stationery’s appearance, the guest plans their entire experience to attend around the invitation style to include their dress attire to how they are imagining their time at the event.
In the middle ages, a town crier would deliver the message to invite individuals by shouting from the rooftop of a building or through the streets. Persons within range of his voice would get the news and spread the word about the special celebration. To be more formal, a local monk would hand-write in calligraphy individual invites and seal them with a waxed seal, then deliver them to the invited guests.
As the years have passed, the look and feel of the invitation (formal name, stationery) has changed tremendously but the joy of receiving is still the same! We contacted some of our favorite stationery partners to ask them about new and exciting “WOW” trends in stationery design for 2018.
Lead Designer, Letrice Penn of LePenn Designs, is excited about recent her clients who really want to personalize their invitations and include wow factors without being ostentatious. Letrice creates for her clients custom envelopes that are more embellished and intricate in detail rather than a standard white or ecru envelope! This fine detail of the invitation becomes a show stopper right from the mailbox with die cut flaps, foil printing, hand calligraphy, beautiful liners, etc.! Letrice’s design plan is to create invitations and stationery that guests will want to keep as treasured keepsakes from her client’s event. She loves artistic expression through paper, unique details and working with clients who appreciate the importance of stationery.
Teaira Abston of Dreacatcher Stationery gets overjoyed to implement textures and fabrics such as velvet, suede, etc in her invitation designs. She says these fabrics look amazing with foil printing (especially gold foil) on deep fall colors such as burgundy and black. Teaira loves working with people who trust her creative ability and are open to trying something unique. If you love texture, color, and patterns, but also appreciate clean lines and simplistic things then she’s your girl.
Our partner in Florida, Emily Baird of Emily Baird Designs, gets very passionate in creating invitations with her clients who are excited to use new and interesting materials like wood, acrylic, hand painted elements, and various other items to make their invitations unique. Emily and her team adapt to a broad range of design styles and unique materials, and work in every print style you can imagine including digital, letterpress, foiling, embossing, stamping, watercolor, and silk-screening.
Patterns and bold colors! The bolder the better says, Nicole Fingers of Fingers in Ink. Her sense of design gets stimulated when her clients want to introduce bold colors and patterns in their stationery suite! Patterns are becoming more and more popular this year on all fronts of event design. With 16 years of creating alluring, elegant and trendy couture invitation ensembles, Nicole and her team take pride in using imported papers, fabrics, ribbons, premium printing techniques and meticulous finishing handwork.
For the modern client, they are intrigued by “less is more”, says Letrice of LePenn Designs. This is an approach where we keep the design very clean and minimal, allowing beautiful typography to shine in combination with specialty printing such as foil and letterpress!
NOTE: ALL OF THE PICTURES SHOWN ARE THE UNIQUE DESIGNS OF OUR FEATURED STATIONERY DESIGNERS.