Emily and Doug came to us with a clear idea of what they wanted: an invitation set that was clean and stylish, but with a classic feel and elegance to suit their traditional Charleston wedding.

We started with the type. Emily initially considered having the text and monogram hand-designed by a calligrapher in order to achieve the classic look she envisioned. But before heading in that direction, we tried laying out the invitation in a couple of script faces -- finding that Sloop gave us the elegance we were hoping for while at the same time setting up a beautifully fluid, crisp, and sophisticated set.

Emily wanted a letterpress invitation that would be immediately striking when pulled from the envelope. We chose black ink on extra-thick 500 gsm Somerset Textured cards and we sized them for our large Arturo envelopes. To frame the text, we pressed a 1/4" border in a soft custom-mixed hazy blue. Reception and reply cards were printed to match on our 300 gsm Radiant White Somerset.

With the invitations in the mail, we began work on rehearsal dinner invitations, menus, and thank you notes.

For the menus, we followed the invitation design but added all-caps Century Gothic meal descriptions which contrasted nicely with the fluid Sloop Script titles. Below the monogram we left space for each menu to be hand-calligraphied with each guest's name.

The thank you notes and rehearsal dinner invites were printed on White Somerset paper and paired with PS Collection envelopes. The rehearsal dinner, to be hosted by Doug's parents, was held at Magnolias Restaurant in Charleston. We offset the invitations from the rest of the set slightly by replacing the blue ink with apple, and by adding a custom-designed Magnolia.

It was a pleasure working with Emily and Doug throughout this process. Take a look at the photos; we hope that you find their stationery as lovely as we do!