These Stunning Wedding Invitations Will Make You RSVP Yes
Whether your wedding is intimate or larger-than-life, a creative invitation sets the mood.
Photos by Jaime Susanne Photography
The first aspect of your wedding guests will see, besides the engagement announcement on social media, will be the wedding invitations. For some, your invitation is considered to be a sneak peek of your wedding and hypes up your guests for the monumental event.
Creating an invitation that encompasses your color scheme for the ceremony and reception is a great way to let guests know the party’s aesthetic. Casey Harvilla and Matt Belcastro’s September wedding at the National Aviary featured mostly decorations made by Casey herself, including the invitations.
“I did a lot of our decorations and all of the invitations myself to save money and to bring our own style into it,” Casey says.
It started when Casey and Matt chose their color scheme, a combination of several bright colors to reflect the couple’s personalities. Casey, who has a background in design, “used some of that to [her] advantage.”
Casey, who has an art therapy and design business, designed the invitations digitally and then sent them off to be printed. One of her bridesmaids, who also has a design background, helped cover the printing costs as a wedding gift for Casey.
Along with the invitations, Casey designed the wedding programs, and a band poster (their wedding also had an underlying music theme) that was displayed at the reception for the guests to sign as a guestbook.
When DIY-ing your invitations, Casey says to give yourself time to complete the task. For her, the process was relaxing, but waiting until the last minute would definitely make it more stressful.
Photos courtesy Photos By Tabi
If your wedding has an overarching theme, you might want to design your invitations with that theme in mind. Shelley Brandt and her husband David Miscampbell were married at DiSalvo’s Station in Latrobe, an old train station turned restaurant preserved by the National Register of Historic Places. To match the location, Shelley, who has orchestrated numerous events at the Blood Science Foundation where she works as the director of operations, designed the invitations and place cards as vintage train tickets.
“I wanted it to look a certain way, so I picked specific design elements, like the calendar at the bottom and the ticket number at the top [of the invitation], which was our wedding date,” Shelley says.
Shelley designed the invitations and place cards with Dream of Dahlia, an independent designer based in Delaware County. Shelley says that they worked well together, and that was important when it came to the final products. Without excellent communication between a couple and their designer, Shelley’s ideas may not have been portrayed accurately.
Photos by Kristi Telnov Photography
Designing your invitations in a way that pays remembrance and symbolism to a loved one is another creative idea. Lindsay Albrecht and Mike Loadman paid their respect to Lindsay’s late grandmother by weaving intricate hummingbirds into the design of their invitations.
Lindsay’s grandmother was fond of hummingbirds for as long as Lindsay can remember. After she passed, Lindsay and her husband moved to California, where the couple began to see hummingbirds frequently. To Lindsay, this meant that her grandmother was watching over her.
When they moved back to Pittsburgh and began planning their wedding six years later, Lindsay wanted to have her grandparents to be a part of the wedding. After working with Momental Designs out of Wyoming County, she decided to incorporate hummingbirds onto the invitations, weaved subtly into the greenery.
“I wanted the style of the wedding to be very black and white and simple, as far as the colors go, and I wanted the invitations [to be] as well,” Lindsay says.
The greenery paid homage to their wedding venue, Omni Bedford Springs, which they booked to get the feel of a destination wedding for those who couldn’t travel. The pinkish-hue of the invitation reflected the color of the bridesmaid dresses.
“I incorporate someone that had passed away — something symbolic to me. It was a way for me to include her in memory with my invitation,” Lindsay says. “I think [designing your invitations] is a great way to incorporate what your wedding will be like.”
That is one thing the brides all had in common: an idea of foreshadowing the day to come.
“Try to make it an expression of [the couple], and try to put some thought into it,” Shelley says. “Usually, you have something unique between the two of you that you share, and the people who love you will understand it.”
