Introducing ‘Sweethearts‘, the latest of our new designs for 2011.  The inspiration behind this design is unashamedly romantic with the two hearts linking together signifying the bond of marriage.    These cards are a small work of art with  handmade linked hearts in gold or silver plated wire attached to ribbon and pearlescent beads used to sew the ribbon to silk paper with either gold or silver thread.  This is then mounted onto high quality 300gsm natrelle card with gold or silver foil printing and completed with 135gsm inserts.  We are certain that there is something for everyone with this new design as it’s available in 29 colours and can be finished in gold or silver to suit your colour theme perfectly.  The colours available are black, silver, old gold, chocolate, snow white, eggshell, ice blue, larkspur blue, royal blue, purple, lavender, violet, pale lilac, pink, baby pink, perla, cerise pink, raspberry, burgundy, red, brick red, tangerine, orange, yellow, light yellow, apricot,  lime, emerald and hunter green.  Yes indeed, we have been busy!

8XP000 Butterfly Invitation Detail

The other element that is quite unique for this design is the beautiful textured coral insert.  It matches the front of the design perfectly and has a butterfly print that whisps across both sides of the insert.  It looks stunning when printed in deep pink ink (included as standard in the personalisation).  We thought it was so important to show this detail so we added the two shots in this blog post to our website as supplementary images to the day invitation picture.  No amount of photographic detail can take away from the look and feel of a posted sample which is why we provide them for free at Olivia Samuel but it can help a customer when narrowing down their choice of design. 

We recently imported this design from old website to our new site and we also copied over the reviews from previous customers who had ordered it.  Not one reviewer gave the design less than 5 out of 5 stars.  Its a winner in our view too but that is not say we don’t have any other excellent butterfly wedding invitations on show.  We are in the process of setting up a themes section on our site.  The butterfly wedding invitation theme is the first to be categorised and you won’t fail to spot the new Pure Butterfly design from Chapter One or indeed the Butterfly Style design from The Letter Press of Cirencester, both of which will feature on this blog very soon.

8XP000 Butterflies Unique Insert

I am not sure where this is going and I am hardly one to preach about community spirit.  My wife went on to remind me that I hardly even talk to the neighbours when mowing the lawn so I am not likely to be getting my ladder out to hang bunting from the lampposts.  Anyway on to those St George’s Cross wedding invitations…..

Only joking.  I am not ensure even the most fervent England supporter who is getting married on World Cup final day this year would sanction a red cross on the front of their wedding invites but they may be interested in restoring a little national pride with the Emblems range of wedding stationery from CCA.  It was by coincidence that I was adding the Emblems range to our site on St George’s day without realising what day it was.  The Emblems range does not exclude our fellow islanders and the designs feature a national symbol for England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland by way of rose, thistle, daffodil and shamrock respectively.  You can find the Emblems range of stationery on our site in the Name the Day collection.  Personalised wording is printed on a white insert and invitations come with white envelopes as standard.

PS.  If anyone is interested in arranging their own street party for the World Cup, Queen’s jubilee, their wedding, their cat’s birthday or any other excuse for a good knees up then these websites are a good place to start.  The Big Lunch website (a heroic attempt to revive street party atmosphere was organised by the Eden Project last year) and Street Party (a charitable organisation who promote small scale community street parties)

Pure Sunflower Invitation

We have recently launched the latest addition to our Pure Collection with Pure Sunflower.  As with other designs in our Pure range the attention to detail is key.  Each sunflower is formed by hand from the painted clay baked flower head through to the twisted silver wire stem and leaf and this is then mounted on to a beaded silk paper.  Any item that is posted (i.e invites, save the dates and Thank You cards) are provided with postal boxes to send to your guests. 

With 14 items in the range you can also coordinate the theme as much or as little as you like.  If you are just looking for a sunflower themed table setting then we have Favour Boxes, Menus, Place Cards, Napkin Rings and Table Plan to choose from.  To help spread the budget we also have a limited time offer that saves you up to 20% when you buy certain reception stationery at the same time. 

FB56 Sunflowers from Millbank and Kent

Millbank and Kent have every possible wedding flower covered that we can think of in their Fresh Blooms collection and their Sunflower design (FB56) is one of the most striking.  There is a good selection of items in the range, which even includes a personalised website to match your stationery.  I also like to see Table Plans of a decent size and Millbank and Kent with Table Plans available up to A1 size on request.  Millbank and Kent currently have a 25% discount off wedding invitations so it is a good time to take a look.

Wickedly Innocent Sunflower Designs

Wickedly innocent has some pretty nifty Sunflower Postcard style invitations.  These A6 invitations are printed both sides so with the invite wording and sunflower image on one side you are free to have a photo on the reverve.  A good opportunity to embarrass yourselves with baby snaps of the bride and groom.  Or you may stick to tradition and have a map of the venue or Guest information list.

Paper Passion Sunflower Scroll Invitation

For something a little different Paper Passion design have some stunning Scroll Invitations which has a tied clusted of three sunflowers.  The sunflower yellow postal box really sets this design off and for hand delivered invitations you can choose to have a sumptious large chocolate brown satin ribbon.

English Folly Sunflower Invite

I wrote about these art deco style Sunflower Invitations  on our sister site Weddingo over 2 years ago and their subtely makes them beautifully different.  I think they have been in the English Folly portfolio for ever longer.  This matters little however because a timeless design such as this has no shelf life.

Dragonfly Couture Stationery

Here at the Wedding Stationery Gallery we receive lots of samples of wedding stationery from companies who want us to write about their products and with no offence intended to these suppliers, I am often left uninspired and quite frankly bored!  So I was very pleased to receive a beautiful bundle of wedding invitations from Dragonfly Couture Stationery that encompassed not only unique designs, but quality and style as well. 

My favourite design is this Chequebook style wedding invitation which is absolutely perfect if you want to have extra information such as accomodation, directions and wedding list information all neatly in one invitation without making it look muddled and messy.  The invitation has six pages that are separated by tissue interleaves, the front title page, the invitation, a perforated RSVP and three information pages.  The front title page has a protective clear plastic cover and there is a  pearlescent back board to give it a lovely quality feel.  Prices for the Chequebook invitations start at £5.95 each which since it includes the RSVP with printed reply envelope and the additional information sheets is pretty good value for such unique invitations.   As well as these stunning invitations Dragonfly Couture Stationery also have a range of Letterpress designs, digitally printed designs that use environmentally friendly soya inks and pocket invitations.

Free wedding stationery samples from the Wedding Stationery Showcase

This site (for those interested) used to be a gallery of wedding invitation designs from various UK wedding stationery suppliers.  The concept was simple, suppliers would pay us a monthly fee to be on our site in return they would ship free wedding invitation samples to those customers who requested them.  The problem was that many wedding stationery suppliers were reluctant to pay for the privelege of sending free samples.  In fact, the trend moved away from suppliers offering free samples to getting customers to pay and this is the model for many wedding stationery companies today.  In turn, our site became stale as many suppliers stopped offering their services so we resurrected the site in its current form as a topical wedding stationery information blog.  This is what you are looking at right now.  It has been a huge success and we are very proud of it.

Never one to give up however, we still believe there is room for a portal whereby customers can choose FREE samples from a number of different suppliers in one easy place.   So we have relaunched our original website idea (that we previously launched back in 2003) as the www.wedding-stationery-showcase.com.  How is it different this time ?  Well its not really.  The main difference is that the wedding stationery companies featured on the site do not have to pay us any advertising costs to be on the site so the money they would normally pay in advertising fees can go towards supplying and posting those free samples.

As a footnote, we know that many wedding stationery suppliers read this blog so if they are interested in featuring their designs on the Wedding Stationery Showcase then have a look over on the site for details on how to get your designs in the spotlight.  We are committed to making the project work this time around so will be making regular references to the site on this blog to give it a kick start.

This wedding stationery range reminds me of a regal looking dinner service, pretty, yet classic and sophisticated at the same time.  The invitation card is a classic flat card, with silver foil detailing and a powder blue border which makes it perfect for a spring wedding, and for that added touch of elegance you can choose raised ink.  It is called the Empire Blue range from CCA, and is available from Olivia Samuel with a fantastic 20% discount, the cost for 50 cards is £106.40, with an additional cost of £15 if you choose to have raised ink.  If you spend over £150 on CCA wedding stationery you will also get a free keepsake box, perfect to keep all your mementos in!

If you’re looking for wedding stationery that’s a little bit different that you can incorporate your wedding colours into, then take a look at Dottie Creations.  They have designs to cover all tastes from floral, butterfly, vintage and hearts, to polka dots, cowboy and zebra designs.  This Romany range caught my eye with its intricate floral design in black with butterflies highlighted in deep red and sage green.  It’s a wallett style invitation which includes the invitation, RSVP postcard, information card and coordinating envelope for £6.60.

You can choose from the full CCA Occasions range of stationery, Letterpress of Cirencester and they will soon have the full range of Collisons invitations, including the relaunched White Lace collection.  All at vastly discounted prices.

This design from Little Angel Weddings immediately reminded me of the Pure Collection from Chapter One.  Not because the designs are similar but the style and mood they convey …  one of timeless romance.

A true romantic myself (although my wife will probably disagree) I do fall in love easily with this style of wedding invitation.  No garish embellishment and no overpowering colours just an English wedding elegance that is pure, pretty and innocent.  This design is from the Ribbons and Bows range and is dissapointedly called Design R4 (I was looking for something a little more Jane Austen).  The name is all I have to quibble about because I do love the way the designer has used texture and the right balance of frill and simplicity to create the white wedding look.  The component materials are pearlescent card, chiffon ribbon, and satin ribbon so I am sure when the light catches this card it looks even better than this image does justice.  It is just as well therefore that Little Angels Weddings offers samples of this card which are priced at the cost of the card £2.85 + 75p Post and Packing.  There is a full compliment of matching items in this range but unfortunately these are not shown on the website and I would suggest getting samples of all the items you require from this set at the same time.