My Best Friend's Wedding (invitations)

I spent the last few days working on the church wedding invites for my best friend, Elaine. A talented designer herself, I felt really honoured to be entrusted to design Elaine's wedding invitations for her.

Elaine and I have known each other since we were 12, and I can say that I don't know of anyone more similar in interests and taste than her. For the design of her invites, I decided that a simple and classic handcrafted wedding invite would reflect Elaine's timeless sense of style.

We decided to keep the cards simple and focus on subtle elements such as the selection of the font and texture of the paper. While scounting the web for a wedding calligrapher, I chanced upon the work of Laura Hooper. As soon as I set my eyes on Laura's work, I knew at once that we had to engage her to do the calligraphy for my best friend.

Laura is well known for her intricate, unique and delicate style of calligraphy. She offers a variety of services including 29 different calligraphy styles for envelope addressing, placecards, etc., and even draws the most gorgeous maps.

I finally settled on a beautiful Allegro Script , which I paired with a San Serif block-like font, for the invite to achieve a simple classic look. Not long after contacting Laura (who is super prompt in her responses), I received the gorgeous artwork and was on my way to gocco-ing 125 invitations by hand. I also got Laura to handwrite the address of the lunch reception which I screen-printed on tags (above) to accompany the invites.

(above) Screen-printing the cards by hand using my beloved gocco! I simply love the imperfections, blotches and everything behind this labour intensive process!

I finally completed the invites at 4am this morning and sent it out. The bride-to-be loves it and I am one happy friend and bride's maid.