We have a great guest blog post from the team behind Alice Palace, one of our recommended wedding stationery companies here at The Natural Wedding Company (you can check out their profile page here).  They have been designing and printing wedding stationery for over 6 years now and often get asked about how they come up with their wedding stationery designs and what information should be included on the invitations.

To help our lovely brides- and grooms-to-be they have come up with a fab guide to help you get the wedding stationery which really reflects you as a couple.  We’re going to hand you over to Liz, Alice Palace’s studio manager, to tell take you through their top tips…

How We Came Up With Our Wedding Stationery Designs

When Charlie and I were planning our wedding, we were a bit indecisive, we knew we wanted a small intimate wedding with just our closest friends and family but that was as far as our ideas went!

So first things first, we fixed our budget, sensible I know, but there was no point coming up with ideas if they were going to run off the money scale!  Once we knew what we had to spend (a small budget), we spent a fun evening consuming a (little) bit of wine, and using the following wedding words we wrote down the first idea that came into our heads:

• Date / time of year we wanted to get married
• Venue / where we thought we would have it
• Colour themes
• What would we eat?
• Our outfits
• The cake
• The flowers
• Stationery ideas

We each took it in turns to read out the answers and discussed our ideas.  This really helped to see what we both wanted and it was a great way to come up with ideas for our own unique wedding stationery – which can then be passed on to your wedding stationery designer (if you’re using one).

What We Decided

Date: October, this is my favourite time of the year, and it also meant we didn’t have to pay ‘peak season’ prices.

Venue: We have a camper van (Freddie), and a few years ago we discovered St Ives, Cornwall and ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT!  We then found the Carbis Bay Hotel and thought it would be the perfect venue!

Colours: We picked out pink and green which luckily complement each other!

Food: We really enjoy eating, so yummy food needed to be on the agenda!  We LOVE cream teas so that was the ‘wedding breakfast’ sorted, and for the evening we chose hot dogs and chips as this is Charlie’s favourite!

Outfits: I really struggled to find a dress, until one night I sketched out my idea (I don’t draw so this was a big thing!!) and I really liked what I saw – I’d describe it as a strapless 50’s lace dress.  Luckily a friend of a friend who makes wedding dresses turned my idea into reality.  Charlie hired a grey suit, and we had great fun, with him trying the different styles.

Cake: When deciding on our budget the cake had low priority, and we were perfectly happy with an M&S 2 tier wedding cake, which we then decorated ourselves with themed pink ribbon and edible pink and green buttons purchased off Etsy.  We also ordered some delicious cupcakes from a local bakery.

Flowers: We went local to St Ives with roses for my main bouquet and really simple flowers for the tables (held in little white jugs).

Stationery: We already knew we wanted Alice at Alice Palace to design our stationery (she is my sister after all!), and because we both LOVE cream teas, it made perfect sense to have this as our theme – along with pink and green colouring, and our design for all the stationery was decided!

What To Include On The Invitations

The wedding stationery was one of the best bits.  It was wonderful creating our unique design with Alice, she created a perfect design which set the fun and relaxed theme of the day.  We did all the planning and organising ourselves to achieve a relaxed, informal and simple wedding with only a couple of speeches and no top table etc.

No save the dates were sent (we weren’t organised enough for a start!) and all our planning was completed within 6 months of our wedding date.

We decided on 2pm for the ceremony, to allow for people travelling a long distance on the day, and for others who arrived the day before, to have time with their families on the beach.  We wanted the wording to be informative with a sense of fun.

We added the hotel details and the date to RSVP and our optional dress colour theme, and we put in a little note to parents that we welcomed children at our wedding, but we wanted it to be the parents’ decision as to whether they wanted their children to attend or to make the most of it and have a weekend away without the kids!

For those children that did attend we created an eye-spy list with Alice and a matching instruction sheet which went down very well!  For our ‘single’ friends we added ‘plus ones’ to make them feel more at ease and accommodation information was included for all budgets – we negotiated a deal with the hotel for guests who wanted to stay at the venue, and then we did quite a bit of research and checked reviews for local B&B’s and hotels.

On our RSVP card we wanted to know who would or wouldn’t be attending, any dietary requirements, and we added music requests that would get our guests up onto the dance floor – these songs later became our playlist for the evening music and everyone got up and danced!

We wanted a small order of the day card, it was very informal, but we felt it important that our guests had an idea of the plan for the day.  We also used it to mention our loved ones that are no longer with us.

Our table names were the names of our pets – our pets mean everything to us, so it was important they were incorporated into the wedding and this seemed the perfect way.  Alice produced matching table names to sit on each table.

Our Advice To Other Couples

Enjoy every moment – it goes so quickly!

Choose your stationery design to reflect you as a couple, we chose the cream tea theme because it’s something we both love.  Other couples have chosen to use the place they first met, or illustrations of their pets, or significant places to represent them within the design, but choose something that tells your story.

Your stationery is what sets the scene for your whole wedding, as your guests get a glimpse of what’s to come from your save the dates and invitations!  Plan your wedding exactly as you both want it.  We did just that and would not have changed a thing!

Alice Palace is a recommended supplier of The Natural Wedding Company.  Based in Worcestershire, Alice Palace create hand drawn and bespoke wedding invitations that tell the story of your wedding day.  A unique range of stationery, which make stunning keepsakes for you and your guests.  All illustrations can include coordinating save the date cards, invitations, rsvps, thank you cards, tableplans, place settings and orders of service.  Visit www.alicepalace.co.uk for more details or contact them at alice@alicepalace.co.uk.