RMW Real Bride Diary {Emma & Dean: Stationery Details}

Hello beautiful people, hope you are all having a lovely Sunday. I love all things crafty, but I have never been particularly talented in that area; so it probably won’t come as any surprise that I don’t consider myself to be a particularly DIY bride. That said, projects seem to keep creeping in somehow, and I hope that when we share our wedding day with you all (eek), you will see a number of handcrafted elements sneaking their way in. Something that I knew would involve some DIY-ing was our wedding stationery. But I needed someone to do the skillful bit; the artistry. Luckily, my avid commitment to admiring all things wedding related since my wedding blogging days paid off – I had long since admired the work of a local lovely, Charlene Buckland, who creates beautiful works of art under the name of The Scribbler. Ironically, I actually blogged Charlene’s wedding a few years ago – so I knew that she had an eye for producing wedding pretty aplenty. But it was artwork that Charlene produced for her best friend’s invites that caught my eye. A beautiful plume of florals, interspersed with the couple’s names and their wedding date, was exactly the kind of stationery perfection that I was after.

After some discussions with Charlene we came up with a couple of designs that enabled us to incorporate a combination of floral explosion, travel, music and words into our stationery; something we felt was really important because this combination will play a big part in the details of our day. You might be wondering where the DIY-ing comes in. Well, whilst Charlene produces the artwork, it would then be up to me to format these into our stationery suite – invitations, inserts, and an order of service. Charlene produced a couple of little floral excerpts that I could drop onto some of the designs, with the main artwork serving as the focal point of the stationery. It might sound pretty straightforward, and I had picked up some skills at work that helped me with the design element, but I also had to teach myself InDesign in the space of an evening, to ensure that I could produce print-ready documents (my fabulous Uncle is a printer by trade, so was helping us out on that front). I won’t lie, it was fiddly. And a little bit stressful (Dean quite quickly learnt to ignore my blaspheming when the intricacies of InDesign alluded me). But we are really pleased with the end result, and I love that we crafted something that is unique to us. It just wouldn’t have been possible without Charlene’s fantastic work, and we are so grateful to her for her patience and eye for detail. I’d always assumed that the two options for wedding invitations, in the absence of being a designer yourself, were to purchase a suite from a supplier, or cut and stick your own. So I am so pleased that I came across The Scribbler and saw the opportunities in this half-and-half approach too. Charlene’s work will also be peppered throughout the day itself as well, and she is working on some additional special projects for us too (we will save the details for the wedding report). But the best part is that we get to keep the original artwork as a memento of the day (including the initial designs that we didn’t go with, one of which I absolutely adored by just wasn’t right for the invites themselves). I’m so excited to have it all displayed on the walls of our dream house.. (is now a good time to mention that I have started house-hunting. Mid-wedding planning. Anyone else entered into such craziness as well? In moments of clarity I have come round to the fact that we really need to wait until after the wedding to commit to such a huge investment. But I mean, if the right place comes along… *unsubscribes from RightMove immediately*). It was a great budget option as well, as we managed to produce all of our stationery for under £50 (admittedly with a little help from our friends, thanks Unc). What are you guys doing for your wedding stationery? There are some beautiful suppliers out there who I know can provide a perfect solution without the headache, so fully applaud going that route as well. I would love to hear about your plans… Lots of wedding love, Emma {Year of the Yes}