New Wedding Inspiration

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It’s only fitting that designer Vera Wang produces a line of wedding invitations that break the mold with elegance and style. After all, her career as a famous designer was inspired by her unsuccessful search for a wedding dress. Wang, seeking the ideal wedding dress for a sophisticated, adult bride, was dismayed to find that nearly everything she looked at had a “sameness” to it, and that they all seemed to be designed for “younger brides”. It took a few years, but Wang took that disappointment in finding the right wedding dress and turned it into a bridal design company.

Vera Wang’s wedding invitation designs carry through the same bold, elegant and innovative eye that she brought to fashion design. The invitations range from classically elegant to whimsical and buoyant, but they all represent Wang’s unmistakable flair for the striking and the dramatic.

Vera Wang’s Wedding Collection features wedding invitations in several different lines. Each line is distinct and distinctive, although some designs do cross over to carry on a design trend. For instance, the floral and frond designs reappear in several different styles of wedding invitation, presented in note cards and fold-over styles as well as in standard card styles. Borders and pattern prints are repeated in envelope liners and in dual-sided wedding invitations that are exclusive to the Vera Wang collection.

Vera Wang Letterpress Wedding Invitation Collection

This unique collection features bold, fashion-forward prints on oyster paper. The prints include floral and paisley in borders and repeats, and in single, splashy designs along the sides or peeking in from the top corner. You will find bright, pattern-on-pattern lace designs alongside delicate screen prints, delicate screen print floral patterns juxtaposed with bold sunbursts. The colors run the gamut from subtle jade green to bold and bright orange, sparking every piece of the wedding invitation ensemble in different, unexpected ways. A real favorite for the modern, unconventional but very elegant bride: the Vera Lace Letterpress Wedding Invitations which feature a delightfully stylized floral pattern against a delicate lace border and makes use of the unconventional and bold color combination of turquoise and jade.

Vera Wang Retro Verso Wedding Invitation Collection

This collection takes a skipping step to the whimsical side of your nature. The Retro Verso wedding invitation collection features bright, cheerful colors in prints that dance across the page. Each invitation is dual-printed with your invitation wording and a border design on one side and a bright pattern on the reverse of the paper. Retro Verso wedding invitations are unmistakably elegant, but have a playful unconventionality that’s appealing to the modern bride. A favorite wedding invitation style from the Retro Verso Dual Sided wedding invitation collection: the Parasol Dual Sided Wedding Invitation, which features sunshiny bright colors and a pattern reminiscent of your childhood Spirograph. It’s bold, flirty and definitely fun.

Bordered Wedding Invitations from the Vera Wang collection

This collection features bold colors and classic styling for the traditional bride with a strong unconventional streak. Colored borders in different styles frame the center panel on each invitation, but each of the borders has its own unmistakable character. Coupled with boldly patterned envelopes, the wedding invitations are both elegant and strikingly unique, a great deal like Vera Wang’s bridal dress designs. The two main designs in the Vera Wang Borders collection are the Bar Panel Border and the Hand Tinted Border wedding invitations. The Bar Panel borders are elegant and classy, featuring a triple frame in bold colors and an embossed double border around an Oyster white print panel. The invitations are coupled with very stylish envelopes with linings inspired by Wang’s own designs. The Hand Tinted borders are more subtle but no less striking, with borders hand tinted in bold, bright colors. There are no frilly details, just an elegant, classy and bold style statement.

Nearly all of the invitations in the Vera Wang collections include beautiful hand-lined envelopes to match the colors of the wedding invitation. The colored linings of the envelopes for the Retro Verso collection, for instance, echo design elements from the wedding invitations themselves, a sunburst parasol for the Parasol wedding invitation or a single gingko fan with the Ginkgo Retro Verso invitation. The Borders Collection invitations are coupled with envelopes lined in bold floral and geometric prints that coordinate with the double-colored borders.

The Vera Wang wedding invitation collections are bold, inspired by the textile prints and color palette from Vera Wang’s “Ready to Wear” collection. Unconventional and bold, these are wedding invitations designed for the discerning bride with an eye for fashion and style. If you are looking for wedding invitations that match your penchant for modern insouciance, the Wang wedding invitation collection is definitely worth a second look.

Having a themed wedding provides for a unique wedding experience, one that you, your friends and family are sure to never forget. A themed wedding can also offer you a plethora of choices for your decisions, starting with themed wedding invitations. Let’s look at a few examples of themed wedding invitations.

Classic/Traditional Wedding

A classic / traditional wedding can also be viewed as a themed wedding! If you are thinking about going with an older style, you should choose invitations that match that idea. Beautifully scripted fonts on foil paper or cursive fonts on plain white paper stock with a textured border are both good examples of a classically themed wedding. You may also choose from a pink or purple so you can offset the more traditional white.

Everything is blooming roses

Flowers are a quintessential part of any wedding, and many couples choose roses as their wedding flower. Roses, along with calla lilies and daisies are the three most popular flower choices for weddings today. This common choice doesn’t have to be ordinary by any means. You may want to also think about taking your lilies, roses and daisies and putting them on your wedding invitations. Yes, this may be a common theme, but by choosing these beautiful wedding invitations, embossed, embellished or embedded in a beautiful color of card stock paper, they can provide you with the opening to a beauty inspired wedding.

Autumn weddings

Having an autumn wedding offers plenty of choices for themed wedding invitations. With beautiful and rich colors exploding in the fall, you can choose some of these impressive tones to accent your invitations. Colors of gold, dark red, browns and olive greens can offset each other beautifully. Couple these bold colors with seasonal aspects like leaves, trees, pine cones and the great outdoors and you have a beautiful wedding invitation.

Winter weddings

Winter wedding themes offer the unique clean aspect of crisp white coupled with icy blues. Snow, ice and frost may also be beautiful accents to your winter themed wedding invitations.

Your wedding destination

If you are hosting your wedding at a vacation destination, do not be afraid to use the destination as a theme for your invitations. If you are travelling somewhere warm and sunny for your wedding, use sandy beaches, sunshine and oceanic scenes to accent your invitations. Put together invites that provide a sneak peek at the rolling ocean encroaching on a sandy beach with the palm trees blowing in the warm breeze. Invite your guests to have some fun in the sun while celebrating your special day.

Western themes

Are you a western couple? Cowboy and cowgirl meet and ride off in the dusty sunset on a pair of magnificent horses? The couple is fully equipped with cowboy boots and hats. Use this theme in your wedding invitations to invite your friends to a western inspired wedding. Accents such as cowboy boots, cowboy and cowgirl silhouettes, spurs, cowboy hats and more can provide an interesting embellishment for your wedding invitation theme. Horses, corrals and ropes can also be used to accent your western theme.

Love is in the air

Of course, many couples are going to choose love as the underlying theme of their wedding. It makes perfect sense; their love for each other is what makes this wedding possible. Love as a theme does not have to be boring. The first thing most people think of when they think “love” is hearts. Heart themed wedding invitations can range from intricate scripted hearts to chunky pink hearts and everything in between. Hearts with flower petals embossed on a high quality paper stock will give you an interesting love-inspired themed wedding invitation.

Another choice for love-inspired invitations is interlocked rings. While this is common, it is no more ordinary than you are. Use interlocking rings as an accent in a deep shade of purple or blue to offset your other colors. This is where you can really get creative.

Your wedding should be your fairy tale romance, so choose something interesting like horse drawn carriages or a surprising castle for the background of your invitations.

Clip art of couples and wedding parties is also a standard in the wedding invitation industry. However, you can mix this up and make it unique to your own wedding by using your own silhouettes as the background for your invitation.

Make your invitation your own

Regardless of the theme of your wedding, you can create a unique, individual wedding invitation that couples the theme of your wedding with your own personal style. Even if the overall theme of your wedding is love or romance, take your own personal ideas of what this means to you and find an invitation that speaks from the heart. Hearts, flowers, rings, silhouettes and more can all be used to embellish your day.

Choose textures and layers

Even ‘standard’ wedding invitations can be embellished and really ‘pop’ when you add some texture to the paper. You can also try layers of different textures and physical embellishments. Ribbons, rings and paper trimmings can add depth to any wedding invitation.

Are you trying to decide between classic wedding invitations and a more modern style? These days, the lines have blurred, but there are still some distinct differences between the traditional classic style wedding invitations and modern wedding invitations. Here’s a quick breakdown to help you decide whether your wedding invitation tastes run to the traditional, or whether your wedding invitation choices are setting the tone for a thoroughly modern wedding.

Paper Choices

The classic wedding invitation is printed on heavy ecru or white paper. That paper is used for all parts of the classic wedding invitation with the exception of a tissue paper liner that is placed over the invitation itself.

Modern wedding invitations may be printed on any high-quality paper, and the colors vary widely. As late as the 1980s, even such simple and subtle color choices as a touch of gold leaf in the invitation border lifted an invitation from the traditional into the modern – and somehow irreverent – category. While traditional wedding invitations are still very popular, modern wedding invitations sparked with color and patterns are quite acceptable.

One very classic invitation style that still has a modern feel is the Pearl Border on Ecru Wedding Invitations from Rytex Weddings’ The Wedding Collection. The ecru card panel is bordered with a pearlized ecru border that is understated and elegant. Make it modern by choosing ink in the color of your choice.

The Inviting Company’s Wedding Collection also adds whimsy to a very traditional ecru panel wedding invitation. The collection of modern wedding invitations that nod to the past include the Chapel Vellum Panel wedding invitation, printed on a heavy white vellum panel and bordered in soft silver. The charming line drawing of a little chapel makes this wedding invitation simple, sweet and romantic.

Color Choices in Classic and Modern Wedding Invitations

Traditional classic wedding invitations are white or ecru, with touches of silver, pearl or gold on the borders or to accent embossed elements of the card. Despite the limited colors, there are still many choices of classic wedding invitations that will appeal to both the traditional and the modern bride.

While the most traditional wedding invitations feature no decoration other than the wording of the invitation itself, which is invariably engraved in black on ecru or white – many modern invitations capture the classic, traditional feel with embossed borders. To retain a truly classic feel, choose a wedding invitation that has even borders on all four sides with a wedding-inspired pattern.

You will also find many modern wedding invitations styles that have a very classic feel to them. One of the most innovative and unusual wedding invitations styles is a 5 x 7 V-Flap Folio Pocket wedding invitation. The clean lines and presentation are essentially classic, but the folio envelope and the wide range of colors pack a thoroughly modern punch. The modern bride can dare to be different without being cutesy, with mix and match color choices that include chocolate, turquoise, pink and apple green.

Embellishments in Modern Wedding Invitations

Traditional wedding invitations carried very few embellishments. The formal presentation of classic wedding invitations is part of their appeal and charm. Modern wedding invitations recognize very few limitations in decoration and embellishments. Designers like Vera Wang and Anna Griffin bring their unmistakable styles to wedding invitations, adding flourishes and bold, splashy prints to both the wedding invitation itself and to the other elements of the invitations package.

Anna Griffin’s line of Platinum Swirls wedding invitations invokes the classic and traditional with heavy ecru backing paper and slim, stylish silver borders. The use of white and silver is a clear nod to the traditional, and a platinum ribbon layered between the backing and the wording panel is the ultimate in modern elegance. This Anna Griffin design and others make it clear that modern and elegant are definitely not mutually exclusive.

The Vera Wang Wedding Invitation Collection features bold, modern graphics in striking styles and colors. There’s nothing shrinking violet about these stunning invitations. The Empress Jewel wedding invitation from the Vera Wang Letterpress line of wedding invitations is an example of Wang’s bold style. The horizontal orientation is a departure from the classic vertical card, and the colored top and bottom beaded borders are beautifully asymmetrical. Asymmetry is a mark of Wang’s modern wedding invitations, elegantly handled to create a striking border for the most important words of your life.

The Text

The wording on invitations is yet another place where the classic differs from the modern wedding invitation. Wedding etiquette decrees specific phrases and tenor for the wedding invitation, but many modern couples are eschewing the traditional to make their wedding invitations a statement of their personal feelings and beliefs.

The wording differs in another way between modern and classic wedding invitations. Tradition calls for black, raised engraving in a formal font. Modern invitations are much freer and more open. Most invitations today are thermal printed rather than engraved, and the thermal printing process produces the same raised lettering that engraving does. Modern invitations may also be printed in any color chosen by the wedding couple without raising eyebrows. The Mix ‘n’ Match Custom Wedding Invitation Collection allows couples to choose colors that mix, match, coordinate and contrast for bold, modern invitations that make a clear, memorable statement about your wedding.