School house wedding

Our good friends (and neighbours!) Roman & Katherine got married at the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse, a historic old schoolhouse in downtown Toronto in 2010 . This vintage building was perfect for their non-traditional wedding: elegant, warm, cozy and beautiful, but by no means were they having a “schoolhouse theme wedding”. So to get in the vintage mood, I put my hair up in a bun, grabbed my wooden ruler, and channelled my inner-19th-century-school-marm…

This was a bit of a stretch for me and a great exercise at stepping out of the box creatively! Had we gone with some of our original ideas – chalkboard, notebook, Comic Sans type…(just kidding), it would have been “cheesy”, and that’s too easy. But Katherine had great vision and it was so much fun to work with her and turn her ideas into a design that set the tone but kept it elegant and tasteful.

The centerpiece of the invitations was the custom-designed stamp that was used repeatedly – hand-stamped on each invitation, return address label, and wedding favour bag. Sure, we could have printed the stamp with the rest of the invitation, but by opting to actually stamp each invitation manually, it really leant an authentic feel to the whole package. The stamp became the “logo” for the wedding, and was even incorporated as a watermark in their Thank You photo.

The invitation itself was meant to look like a hand-written note ripped out of a coil-bound notebook. A gorgeous vintage script font was used and we printed the invitation on a textured cream stock and had it punched. Instead of RSVP cards, an “Attendance Record” (inspired by an old library card) let guests respond with their menu selection. Map and hotel information were printed on replica graph paper to complement the rest of the pieces.

And the piece de resistance was the miniature file folder that housed the whole package! Hand cut, folded, punched and tied, it was the perfect container for this unique wedding invitation package.