Tess and her lovely antique wedding dress have been showing up on a few of my favorite blogs lately. Tess lives in Seattle and asked me a few months ago to help design her wedding invitation (she was married a few weeks ago to a lucky young man named Adam).
To get a feel for what Tess was planning on doing for her wedding, my friend Beth (Tess' mother) came over to share some inspiration. The palette was cream and linen, with mossy greens and a touch of pale pink. Tess is a mycologist (lover of mushrooms and other fungi) so she wanted to incorporate mushrooms and other natural elements like moss and wood into the theme as well.
I first thought about incorporating faux bois into the invite, maybe with a nod to mushroom prints (which I adore). But I kept going back to that dress. Tess' dress is an antique gown she bought years and years ago at a vintage clothing store in New York. I love everything about it, especially the patterns in the lace.
I decided to use the overlapping circles from the front of her dress as the motif for the invitation. I love the symbolism of linked circles for a wedding invitation, linking a couple together, two families together. We letterpressed the invitations on Crane's thick Lettra paper in two colors, with gray for the type and a slight cream for the lace design. (Letterpress printing by Bjorn Press, who did a lovely job)
The inserts for the invitation also used designs I pulled from the lace on Tess' dress. The top card (below) uses the pattern from the lace at the neckline of the dress. The bottom card has a simple dotted circle, gathering in family and friends for the wedding.
The thank you cards (shown below) have a leaf design pulled from the lace on the back of the dress. The small cards (which were attached to favor boxes) have a simple scalloped design inspired by the dress' hem.
You can see more details of Tess' dress here, and details of Tess and Adam's beautiful wedding (with terrariums, ferns and a mushroom cake) here. (photos of Tess taken by photographer Rachel Thurston and used with her permission)
Congratulations Tess and Adam! Now go live a happy life!