As you may or may not know, Calligraphette & Co. just moved from Washington, DC to Milan, Italy. My husband and I have always talked about living abroad, and decided to throw caution to the wind and make it happen. So, he got a job with an Italian tech company and I’m setting C & Co. up in Italy.
I first started doing calligraphy in 2015, and started C & Co. in late 2016, doing place card and envelope calligraphy. Then, in mid-2019 when I moved into DC from Arlington, I took the business full time, focusing on designing invitation suites from Save the Dates through Invitations and Day Of Paper.
Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of working with so many different DC-based couples. Over time, although I’ve mostly worked with clients based in DC, more and more of the couples I’ve worked with have been planning destination weddings. From Martha’s Vineyard to Mexico, and from the South of France to Puglia, I’ve started to feel like my niche is working with couples planning destination weddings.
Why do I think this niche of American couples getting married abroad is right for me? For starters, I planned a destination wedding in France (although we did have to cancel because international travel in September 2020 wasn’t quite the vibe), so I know the ins and outs of being far far away from your wedding venue. I’ve lived in France for about a year and a half over two study abroads, and both speak the language fluently and know the country very well. Besides that, with a decade of working in weddings under my belt (from being an operations manager at a boutique catering company, to assisting wedding planner friends, and of course spending months and months designing with my clients), I know weddings so intricately at this point that it doesn’t matter where they happen to be.
So, we moved to Milan. I have a wonderful relationship with my main artisan printer (and a few other printers I’ve been working with for nearly a decade each), who is based in New York and able to fully handle production and ship suites out to brides. I also have my former assistant at the ready for any assembly needs that need to be done in the US. For any couples planning on getting married in France or Italy, I can be a semi-local source of knowledge, especially as my Italian skills improve. I can hand-deliver your day of goods, and can source unique paper and embellishments that fit your specific location. And, above all, I can be an American in an otherwise foreign place, sending the quick email responses we all know and love, and being a predictable vendor in a sea of customs you’re not quite used to.
So, what’s going to change now that C&Co. is technically based in Milan? Not much. My DC LLC is still there. Other than the tax structure of C&Co., which absolutely no one needs to care about but me (even then, I wish I didn’t have to care about it), I don’t plan on changing much. I would still love to keep DC as my home base, as that’s where my business grew from nothing. All of my wonderful wedding industry friends and connections are in DC, and I love nothing more than a DC wedding. Focusing more on destination weddings doesn’t have to mean only destination weddings. I love a classic black-tie ballroom wedding at the Willard. I love an arboretum wedding. And I know DC so well, how it works, and what the wedding industry is like. So, whether my clients are planning a local DC celebration (in one of the best cities in the world, in my opinion) something farther out in the US, or something as far away as you can get (Sardinia is high on my wishlist), C&Co. is here to help make your vision come true!
Spot the destinations… in this gallery we have: Sonoma County, The Willard, Miami Art Museum, Cape God, Maryland, Nantucket, and The Hay Adams.
Photography: Jenny Wagner Photography