A Wedding In Ireland

It's not often that you work with a bride who is planning her wedding in Ireland, I feel privilege to have been a part of it and wanted to share not only what I designed for her wedding but the incredible venue and breath taking Church where it all took place. I first sat with Eileen and her mom Elizabeth to do her save the dates which you can see in a previous blog posting DESTINATION Ireland.  It was that design which set the tone for the entire wedding.

Eileen wanted the Celtic Knot we used in the save the date to be carried over and used in the invitation design. The only thing or I should say person missing from the design session was the bride herself as she was already over in Ireland but lucky for her she has a SAINT of a mother (Saint Elizabeth) and Grandmother (Saint Shirley) that came in her place. The color palette was a subtle green called serpentine and a rich purple called amethyst. The main component of the invitation was a portable pocket which honestly has been very popular with many of my brides this year. Everyone loves that is it self contained and clean looking. To accent the color palette we used a brocade pattern in graphite, the main invite and additional cards were a shimmery white called first snow.

After seeing the venue Slieve Donard Resort in New Castle and the Church Saint Therese of Lisieux in Belfast I knew I wanted the design to have a classic old world feel. I decided to use a few different vintage frames that were incorporated throughout the entire design. Mother of the bride had a fabulous idea for table numbers, instead of using traditional numbers she wanted to bring more than just a STELLA (stellar) ACCENT to Ireland...... from the Swan Boats to Fenway Park, Bunker Hill Monument to Faneuil Hall, The Black Rose to the U.S.S. Constitution and even The Big Dig; Boston clearly had a presence in Ireland that day.

One of my favorite design pieces was the welcome card for all their guests. I chose a Z card which folds out to reveal two additional panels. For the cover I created a custom map of Ireland to point out the three different locations of where guests would be. I must say I learned so much about what it takes to not only plan a destination wedding but one that is international.

Working with the Paquette family over the last year has been truly wonderful, they're the type of people that make you feel like your part of their family and treat you that way too! So to Elizabeth, Leo, Eileen and "Shirl the Whirl" thank you for choosing me as your designer it was a pleasure working with all of you!

Kathryn & Steven

 Kathryn and Steven were looking for an elegant wedding invitation and wanted a very clean look. That being said Kathryn did not want her design to look boring or plain. I always try to reassure brides that just because you don't use a fancy fold out pocket or patterned card stocks doesn't mean your invitation will look plain. This design is a perfect example of how to use a classic color palette of silver, white and black and still have a WOW factor.

For the main invitation backer I started with an over sized flat square in tahitian pearl, a heavy weight metallic silver card stock that has a beautiful texture to it. The invitation was printed using a mix of black an silver inks on first snow then accented by a hint of black linen. The wedding envelope was black linen and had a custom address label wrap in tahitian pearl. For the design Kathryn wanted to use their initials which sat on top of an elegant ornamental piece which I then incorporated through out the invitation design and onto their place cards and table numbers.

Kathryn and Steven were married just a few days ago and I wish them a happy future together. They were such a nice couple to work with and I just LOVE how their invitation turn out.