Abigail & Adam's RDQLUS Wedding Invite

There is widely-known rule in the design world: avoid working with family! As most creatives know, we rarely follow that rule. On top of that, brides are to be feared. Well, I ignored the potential pitfalls to do work for a young lady that is like family and getting hitched. I'm happy to say right away, she was a delight to work with. She had a vision for what she wanted and "married" that (pun intended) to the process and her trust in her designer. Nice! The couple wanted to be very price conscious where they could and still have a quality product with a hand-finished look, the finishing of which the bride-to-be wanted to handle, herself. Add to that, that this is for what will be her and Adam's most special day to date. With that kind of client the weight shifted from shouldering the load of a potentially impossible client to wanting to do all that I could to play Atlas to this globe-sized expectation.



For the design, I drew inspiration from the flowers that she has picked for her wedding day—peonies. A particularly difficult flower to silhouette or interpret, I actually paused on that approach and moved to looking at typefaces. And there it was: 'Affair'. (Ironic name for a wedding invite, but we'll read it in a good way) The sweeps and gentle, yet decisive bends of this font was too much to ignore. As I tested out a few phrases to get a look at letters and ligatures, it hit me; Could I possibly create a peony floral from re-purposing these letter-forms? A bit more serendipity as the forms I'd need to use came into focus: (2) families become (3) families as these (2) people come from each family to form a new one. There's also the fact that they will bound together in the eyes of the & the Holy Trinity. So with the numbers '2' & '3' of the typeface I created the "numeric peony" logo that would be used on both the invite and r.s.v.p. card.





The printing was done digitally to keep the costs within budget, and the paper selection would be critical to the finished product. Both was masterfully done by industry pro, Tanya Patry, rep'ing for Leading Edge Printing here in Omaha, NE. The invites and r.s.v.p.(s) were printed on Cougar Natural Cover and the holder/wrapper was cut from Classic Columns Epic Black Cover.

When Abi came to pick up the parts, she simply said "LOVE them! I'm happy, and the color is better than I expected." A designer could make career of chasing such words. Congrats to Abi & Adam and best wishes for a long, loving future.

(Thanks to Tanya Patry and Leading Edge Printing)



--Stevie G.