Invitation for/by Saint Gertrude

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CLIENT

Saint Gertrude is a self-taught design­er and let­ter­press print­er run­ning her own busi­ness. A pret­ty quirky kid who deliv­ers the unexpected.

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BRIEF

To cre­ate an invi­ta­tion to our sur­prise wed­ding with­out giv­ing away the sur­prise. The invi­ta­tion need­ed to effec­tive­ly con­vey a decoy message—our daugh­ter’s birth­day party—but also cre­ate mean­ing for the guests who, in ret­ro­spect, would real­ize that this was always going to hap­pen: we were get­ting married.

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APPROACH

The pur­pose of this piece was to give our loved ones the gift of the ulti­mate sur­prise and to cre­ate an elec­tric mem­o­ry for them. Wed­dings can be con­trived affairs, with all kinds of pre­con­ceived expec­ta­tions, but we want­ed to catch our guests so unaware that they had no choice but to be com­plete­ly present in the moment with us. The design also held a poignant sub­text that although the wed­ding was a sur­prise to them, for us get­ting mar­ried was actu­al­ly a fait accom­pli; it was always there, just under the sur­face, and lit­er­al­ly writ­ten in the stars.