Personal and Sophisticated Wedding Stationery Ideas: Beyond the Basics
There are some stationery items that all wedding celebrations need – serving both a practical purpose and a styling one – and we’re all joyously familiar with them: the save the dates, the wedding invitations, and the day-of menus, place cards, and table plan.
Some weddings call for additional stationery details, helping to guide guests through ceremony rites, through weekend activities, and through elaborate gastronomic experiences: this is where items like orders of service, vow books, wedding itineraries, and food and drink signage come into their own.
But beyond these, there are so many more ways that couples can personalise their wedding day through stationery, and here at Ananya Cards we absolutely adore brainstorming creative ideas with our couples and our partner wedding planners.
THE RUN-UP
One of our favourite ways to go beyond the basics when it comes to save the dates and invitations is to decorate our couples’ envelopes with calligraphy, gold foil patterns, and beautiful wax seals and stickers.
In preparation for the wedding celebrations to come, it can also be a wonderful idea to send your guests some personalised gifts – either as part of the invitation suite or an additional surprise closer to the date. One idea, which we particularly love for destination weddings, would be to print your stationery motif or monogram onto a luxurious silk scarf, alongside some patterns and colours reminiscent of the destination of your wedding, and send this out as a gift to each couple ahead of the wedding day.
The designs and artwork created for your save the dates and invitations can also be re-used to make your wedding website and online RSVP experience feel branded, sophisticated, and seamless, and we even work with our couples to integrate QR codes to make the process even easier.
The moment of guest arrival is a particularly impactful one, as you have so many opportunities for making guests feel welcome, looked after, and thought of. For example, you could have personalised door handle tags for everyone’s bedrooms, personalised "sleeves" for their hotel room cards or their room keys, and of course personal letters and itineraries in the welcome boxes, outlining the celebration schedule.
THE CEREMONY
For most ceremonies, orders of service are a must in order to share the ritual details, wording, and timings with your loved ones. As an additional idea, you could work with your stationery designer to design bespoke tissue boxes, confetti holders, or even delicate personalised fans for each guest, for those hot weather destinations.
We also love being creative with the reserved seat labels, which can be die cut into elegant shapes, tied with coloured silk ribbon, or woven into the back of the chair with fabric and foliage.
THE DINNER
The dining table is another opportunity for delighting guests with details and surprises. The menu, place cards, table numbers, and table plan will be essential in showing your loved ones to their seats, of course; on top of this, some creative ideas could be to decorate the table fabric or placemat itself, to explore more unique menu shapes, and to embroiderer the napkins as elevated, personalised gifts.
If you are giving anything to your guests in the form of favours which you are styling on your table settings, you could tie a personalised favour tag to this – or even work with your stationery designer to create bespoke favour packaging: like sleeves for mini drink bottles, boxes for mini chocolates, or personalised wedding branding for any items you’re gifting. If you’re donating to charity, we can create some thoughtful donation cards to share your mission with your nearest and dearest.
THE RECEPTION
For the drinks and evening reception, stationery can play a part with signage of course – but we also love creating interactive details that guests can explore and enjoy. For example, you could create personalised paper for guests to write some advice for the newlyweds, tactful signage for donating to a honeymoon fund through a QR code, or signage for interactive games or stations that guests can partake in.
A lot of our couples ask us to create monograms for them, and this artwork can be re-used in lots of creative ways throughout the evening, such as stamping it on wax seals to decorate signage, printing it extra large on vinyl to decorate a bar or a dance floor, or embroidering it or printing in on cute cocktail napkins.
BEYOND THE DAY
After the wedding day, stationery can continue to play its part in delighting your guests by creating bespoke thank you cards, or some personal letterhead stationery on which you can write individual thank you messages.
We hope these ideas have given you some exciting food for thought on how to elevate your wedding stationery beyond the basics! If you’re looking for an experienced, thoughtful, and creative stationery partner to create luxurious suites for your wedding, or for your wedding planning clients, we would absolutely love to hear from you.
Article contributed by Vaishali Shah at Ananya Cards. For more information, here are the contact details.
Also read: 2024 Wedding Stationery Trends: A Cultural Affair
