Project Description

My brother and his fiancé asked me to design their wedding stationery, and I was beyond excited to begin. They asked first for a custom wordmark or monogram, and I used their initials ("J" for John, "L" for Leah, and combined both letters into an "H" for their new shared last name, "Herbst") and they absolutely loved the result. They loved the monogram so much, we used it on their ketubah (a Jewish wedding contract), programs, wedding signage, foil cocktail napkins, thank you notes, and I hand-carved it into their wedding guestbook, which I also made by hand. In addition to the monogram, the next design was the ketubah, which was inspired by early Renaissance Italian design, and featured laurel leaves and ornaments and painted in indigo, green, lavender, and metallic gold ink. Then we chose wedding colors: lavender, gold, ivory, and a deep purple for certain accents. Their wedding was to be an early summer, elegant affair in a historic Pittsburgh hotel, and the bride wanted to incorporate hand-drawn calligraphy with ornaments from my ketubah design. I designed the calligraphy for the invitation and headline copy for the accompanying pieces, and chose the typeface Centaur for the remaining copy. I also added handmade icons for the dinner selection on the RSVP card. I proposed a letterpress suite, with gold foil accents, and a blind emboss of the Italian-style ornaments along the border of the invitation. We paired it with lavender envelopes, bound together with a lavender belly band and sealed with a gold wax seal (with their monogram embossed, of course). The invitation suite was printed on 118# Savoy Natural paper, with a specially selected Pantone ink, gold metallic foil, and a blind emboss.