Armando reached out to me with about five weeks until he and Marianne needed their wedding invitations mailed out. They were open to both semi-custom and custom invitation design, and I let them know that if they could make quick decisions, we could do custom design. With their vision and gorgeous venues, it was a no brainer to start from scratch and create a completely unique wedding invitation suite in a little over a month!
We started from the inspiration of Portuguese tiles, also knowing that we wanted to feature the venues of their various events in watercolor. They sent me a few inspiration images of different tiles, and I also tried pulling an image from the tiles at the restaurant from their reception. We toyed with the idea of multi-colored tiles, but decided that they wanted to do a single color of letterpress on the invitation, and opted for a classic tile design. On their envelope liner, we opted for a lighter design featuring a soft yellow to mimic their church.
On their detail card, we placed each of their events into a column. Their welcome drinks were at an iconic DC spot for ramen, which was a joy to paint. For their rehearsal dinner invitation, we used the same silhouette of Daikaya but in a simpler line illustration in a champagne foil on navy card stock. Their wedding ceremony was at possibly one of the most iconic churches in DC, right next to the White House. Then, their reception was at a fabulously designed Mediterranean restaurant, so I did a watercolor of the interior to give their guests a glimpse of what to expect.
Then, for their day of goods, as always, the design process was so simple and smooth because we had already made so many design decisions with the invitation suite! The table numbers mimicked the invitation exactly, we used the illustration of the church on their programs, and the same navy cardstock for dramatic menus and place cards. My favorite addition was their cats, featured in their signature cocktails!
Photography: Jenny Wagner Photography
