This week I am mostly preoccupied with wedding invitations, since my fiance has just had ours printed. He designed them himself along Charles Rennie Mackintosh lines, although I dare say the weasels on the back are a little unorthodox. This got me footling around the web looking at other individual designs produced by arty types…
This Design*Sponge collection of some of their favourite off-beat designs took my breath away. The detail! The individuality! The pretty, damnit! Extra points for clever go to the pictured grade school-themed invites.
Of course, those who have two left paintbrushes between them still have an option if the standard white-with-silver-Copperplate is too boring for words. Aside from commissioning a friend to do it – our invitations are not the first wedding set Ashley has produced this year – you can pick from a huge and brilliant collection at online craft emporium Etsy.
Already a firm favourite with geeky design whores, my favourites from the most recent Etsy collection include Phoebe, a dandelion-flecked, elegantly rounded offering, an eco-friendly invite with a tear-off reply card and a childlike Storybook design which includes the designer’s hand calligraphy. I could devote a whole other column to my love of calligraphy, and did consider doing my own for the invitations but couldn’t face doing it over a hundred times.
Anyway, Etsy chic is definitely the way to go. You can even get a custom cartoon drawn if you want to be tongue-in-cheek and thoroughly unique. Friends of mine didn’t go for that for the invitation, but did go and hand paint a couple of plates with self-portraits and the date, which they then gave to their parents as thank you presents and mementos of the day.
Next week: funeral chic! Just joking…