Other than perhaps hiring your wedding planner, selecting the wedding venue is pretty much the first step in your wedding planning journey. Even if you have a special date you know you want, you have to find a venue with availability to match. And for most, the venue is a huge deal – couples could be going for ballroom elegance, seaside in the sand, a magical evenings under the oak trees, a chic urban vibe, or any number of other styles, and booking a venue that aligns with those goals will make it that much easier.
As long time wedding stationers, we pride ourselves on being an expert wedding stationery guide for our clients. Every wedding is made up of multiple vendors, and for couples, it’s a huge learning curve on dealing with each one. What flowers cost more and why, why is this paper so much more than that one, the pros and cons of buffets versus seated dinners, etc. We know how challenging every element of a wedding is, not just the custom wedding stationery!
One of our specialties at Dodeline when it comes to custom wedding stationery is to match the design to your venue style. In Charleston, there are just so many incredible venues it’s hard to resist featuring them in some way in the stationery package. If you’re wondering where to begin, don’t worry! Today we’re going to dive in to how to match stationery to venues, but you can also explore our blog more thoroughly – we think you’ll find that it serves as an incredible wedding stationery guide.
Matching Wedding Stationery to the Venue: A Guide
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Decide on your “buzz words”
It’s helpful to your wedding stationer to have a few guiding ideas for your design process. Some examples might be: “elegant” “black tie” “Great Gatsby inspired” — think about how different that would be than “garden party” “summer evening” “colorful formal” — keep in mind these will be helpful for all of your vendors!
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Think about what about the venue appeals to you most
Here in Charleston, we have many historic venues that are beautiful on their own, but they also are usually surrounded by incredible natural scenery. So sometimes, we will feature the actual architecture of the wedding venue and others we look more at the setting. And of course, we can do both too!
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The refrigerator question
This may seem silly, but over the years, it comes up in probably 75% of our conversations. Do you envision your guests putting your wedding invitation on their refrigerator? If so, and featuring the venue is important to you, you may want to have a venue illustration on the actual invitation instead of the envelope liner or somewhere else. Other folks prefer to keep the invitation very classic and timeless without any additional art and put the venue elsewhere.
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To be literal or not to be literal
Of course, an illustration of the venue or setting on your custom wedding stationery is the most direct way to match your wedding stationery with your venue. However, you can always just take cues from the venue without using it literally. For example, maybe there’s a cool wallpaper inside the historic home you want to pull and use for an envelope liner, or maybe a specific color to reference with the ink or paper.
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Remember that there is more than just the invitation
If you love a totally timeless wedding invitation – think engraving and panel cards and ecru – then perhaps you want to worry about matching venue style elsewhere in your custom wedding stationery. Remember that there are save the dates to consider as well and these are often a less formal piece, so they can be the perfect spot for a venue illustration. Additionally, you could consider using the venue on wedding thank you notes or other wedding day paper if the invitation isn’t the right spot for you.
Here at Dodeline, resident artist and owner Sarah Reed creates custom venue illustrations for our clients all the time, while also serving as our lead wedding stationery guide. We would love to chat with you about how to create a cohesive and beautiful wedding stationery suite! Find us on Instagram to explore more of our behind the scenes and current work, or reach out via email here.
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