Wedding stationery is the first thing a guest sees, setting the stage for the look and feel of the entire wedding. And since we’re right in the middle of engagement season, I’ll give you a behind-the-scenes look at my process of designing custom wedding stationery.

The first step, is to meet the couple and hear their unique love story. This is my favorite part of my job — newly engaged couples are full of such joy and excitement!

Our featured couple is Kelly & Ray. They’re one of those couples you love to spend time with — they’ll make you love, LOVE.

Kelly and I have been friends for several years. She’s funny, quirky and one of the most genuine people I know. She’s also a really talented artist.

Now meet Ray. He’s a family therapist and is really passionate about great TV series and books. He is also hilarious, rocks a great beard and you can tell how much he loves Kelly just by the way he looks at her.

Their wedding is going to be at Cross Creek Ranch in Tampa, FL. It’s going to be a celebration full of casual rustic elements, dancing and of lots of JOY.

During our initial meeting we discuss the couples vision for the wedding. Wedding stationery is dear to me because it’s a keepsake you’ll have long after your wedding day. Along with your wedding photos, you’ll cherish your wedding printed materials for years to come — and one day share them with your kids!

After meeting with the couple, we begin by creating a Pinterest board where the couple and I can pin images that inspire them, creating a visual wedding board. I’ll also ask the couple to clip images from magazines, gather paint chips of colors they love or fabric with a favorite pattern. Anything they see and think, “This should be a part of our wedding.” It’s in all these small details that the ambiance for the wedding begins to come to life.

Once I have a solid foundation of what the couple envisions for their wedding, I begin by creating a logo for the couple. The logo will be a mark used across all their wedding stationery. (One couple even embroidered their logo on their ring pillow!) Below are some sketches from the process of creating Kelly & Ray’s logo. I’ll usually design a logo with the couple’s full names and a mark with their initials in the same style to be used as a monogram.

After the couple’s logo is created, the first part of their custom wedding stationery is designing Save the Dates. When I talked with Kelly she kept mentioning the words adventure, celebration and pennant flags. I wanted to incorporate those items into the design and wording on the Save the Date. After sketching some pennant flags, I scanned them in and cleaned them up in Illustrator and here’s the finished Save the Date!

Currently, I’m working on the design and assembly for Kelly and Ray’s wedding invitations. I have visions of textured paper, burlap, twine and ribbons. Check out Lemonlark’s website, they’ll be making their debut in May!