Are you into all the beautiful, nitty gritty details? If you said yes, then here is our guide to custom wedding stationary! Working with a professional stationer to order and design custom wedding stationery is a great way to add beautiful details to your wedding day. Your save the dates, invitations, and day-of details present endless opportunities to infuse unique elements into your day.
We’ve broken down the basics & some vocabulary about custom wedding stationery below. You, too, can be an expert when you are ready to work on your own!
What is Custom Wedding Stationery?
Similar to branded letterhead for a company, custom wedding stationery (not stationary) includes all the coordinated paper goods needed for your wedding day and leading up to it. It gives the first impression for the feel & look of the day and serves to get your guests excited for the upcoming event.
Custom wedding stationery examples include:
- Bridal Shower Invitations
- Save the Dates
- Wedding Invitation Suite (suites is the word used to refer to all the bits & bobbles together that make up a cohesive invitation design!)
- Thank You Cards
- Dinner Menus
- Place Cards/Escort Cards
- Welcome Bag Inserts
- Bar Menus, Seating Charts, and other day-of details
Custom Wedding Stationery Basics
Invitation Card
The star of the show! Includes information like the couple’s names (can be full names, first & last, or just first names depending on how formal you’re aiming for), wedding date, ceremony location, dress code, and ceremony start time.
Details Card
The perfect spot to include additional details that you want guests to know are important. This could include hotel room block information, information about additional weekend activities (welcome party, goodbye brunch, etc), and your wedding website.
Tip: If you want to handle RSVPs online through your wedding website rather than through a tangible RSVP card and envelope, the details card is also where you’ll put the RSVP-by date and a note for guests to reply online.
RSVP Card & Envelope
Smaller inserts with the key information for guests to fill out including their names, whether or not they’re attending, how many people they’re RSVP-ing for (which is especially important when you give the guest a plus one or you’re inviting a whole family with one invitation), meal choice if it’s a plated meal, and when they need to respond by.
The RSVP envelope should have your return address already on it and be pre-stamped so guests can just fill out the card and pop it in the mail.
Tip: If you have international guests, it’s not rude to leave off the RSVP stamp. With all the different postage requirements in different countries, your priority is to make sure it gets to them in the first place!
Guest Address
There’s a wide array of formatting options for guest addressing but in general, addresses should be formatted with the guests’ first and last names and have their address completely spelled out (“street” instead of “st”, “apartment 12” instead of “apt 12”).
Return Address
Typically you plug in the mailing info for the hosts of the wedding- whether that’s parents, the couple, etc.
Tip: Since these typically don’t take up a lot of space on the flap of the envelope, we love adding in a little design element like a monogram to tie into the design of the rest of the invitation!
When To Order Custom Wedding Stationery
We created this handy flow chart below to give you an idea of when you should reach out to a designer if you’re looking to have custom wedding stationery created. You can definitely adjust this to your personal circumstances- but this should be a good starting point!
If you’re looking to DIY your invitations or purchase a ready-to-use template you can definitely start this process closer to 3-4 months out. For whichever route you choose, we recommend triple checking the ceremony start time with your photographer & your coordinator before sending the invitations off to print. We also recommend having your RSVP-by date set to 1.5 months before your wedding so you have time to chase the stragglers who didn’t RSVP and adjust your final orders before the due dates (this especially applies to things like floral and rentals!).
Blog by: Jamie Martin
