Pure Rose in Sage Green

We get a lot of requests to customise our Pure Collection and the most popular is a colour change of the Rose or Lily.  We will be introducing some of the more popular colour requests to our website soon.   Bespoke colour matching is always a challenge because the clays often dry a slightly different colour when baked so we often have to test a number of times.  We were particularly pleased with the colour match of our latest creation.  I do not recall having created a green rose before and it was quite a challenge to get the right colour rose to match a swatch of fabric from the customer’s dress.  We mixed two clays (English Garden Green and Avocado) in 50 /50 proportions to get the gorgeous sage green colour pictured here.  We do not charge extra for the colour matching service and we always send free samples for approval before we proceed with an order.  If you would like a lily or rose in a particular then please give us a call or email us and we will be happy to oblige.

weddinginvitationshop.co.uk Design of the Week

 The site features many of the finest UK suppliers (us included of course) and splits them into style categories from mainstream themes such as ‘Contemporary’ and ‘Traditional’ to more specialist finds such as companies supplying “Scroll’ and ‘Pocket Fold’ invitations.  It is great to see sites evolve that focus purely on wedding stationery.  It is such an important part of the big day and for years  most information on wedding stationery choice and design has been spread thinly among the big wedding portals such as Hitched.co.uk, Wedding Chaos or Confetti. 

The Wedding Invitation Shop promise some great new changes to their site over the coming weeks and months so it is a worthy addition to your favourites.  Or you can follow them on Twitter

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.

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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.   

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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.

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.

Well my views changed after doing a spot of Blackberry picking with my wife and children yesterday.  Despite it being the middle of August we have have little sunshine over the last few weeks and the ripe blackberries were unsurprisingly few and far between.  What did seem to be flourishing between the thickets were a surprising number of flowering thistles.  I guess the rainy, cloudy weather we have been having was more akin to that in the Scottish Highlands.

In any case these flowering thistles shone with beauty among the rambling blackberry thorns and up until yesterday I would have probably clumped the two together in the same family.  The heads of the thistle were not at all prickly and quite soft to the touch and the beautiful purple flowers were so vivid against the green foliage.

Unfortunately, many of the thistle wedding invitations on the market seem to overplay the Scottish roots of this flower rather than concentrate, as I did yesterday, on its beauty.  So what you tend to find is that the thistle is surrounding by Tartan ribbon and bows or Celtic knots and symbols.  Well here are some more elegant thistle wedding stationery designs to show you what can be achieved with this marvellous flower.  I think it would make a wonderful choice of wedding flower whether you are Scottish or not.

Emblems Thistle from Olivia Samuel

Thistle Design - Weddinginvitesonline

Bespoke Sketched Thistle Invitation - ValCarr

Blind Embossed Thistle Motif – Letterpress Thistle - Piccolo Press

Elspeth Letterpress design with a Rambling Thistle Border – Willow Wood

Since all things vintage have been back in fashion I have been searching for a wedding stationery range that captures that classic, Laura Ashley or Cath Kidston, English rose style to bring you, and have had quite a task until I came across this Nova range from Sparkle & Rose.  The pretty pink and blue rose print evokes a real country garden feel and would be perfect for a marquee reception where you could decorate the garden with bunting and birdcages.  Invitations cost £3.50 each and come in four colourways.

Orchid wedding stationery is hard to find, but something really unique that isn’t a small paper or silk flower stuck on a card is even harder to find.  These Orchid wedding invitations from Spunsilk are not cheap, but they come in a gorgeous silk box, wrapped in tissue, with a postal box and RSVP included in the £10.95 price.  You can change the silk backing and they will do their best to match your orchid colour as well.  Not only will your guests be wowed by a really stunning wedding invitation, but they will be able to keep the box and flowers as a lovely keepsake after the wedding.