pattern design | hand & digital illustration | typography |
print production | web design

INVITATION DESIGN

Special days,
special designs

An invitation suite is the perfect way to share the special moments of your love story in a visual medium!

Designing my own wedding suite was a dream come true. It was a way for my husband and I to share stories of how our families taught us to love, sentimental memories of our childhoods, and a beautiful exercise for me to visually blend our unique cultures and upbringings. This suite also showcased my passion for patterns, textures, and riotous color.

Since Covid postponed our wedding and made in-personal gatherings a rarity, I wanted our suite to be a sunburst of joy from the moment our guests opened their mailbox to see a sunny yellow envelope.

Below, you’ll find descriptions of the inspirations behind the design.

  • The bluebird and cardinal, state birds of Missouri, my childhood home, and Illinois, where we now live.

  • Growing up, my husband's mother always told him that you know someone loves you when they spend time preparing a pomegranate for you.

  • The Chinese character for "double happiness" is commonly associated with weddings.

  • I have fond childhood memories of my late Papa picking fresh blackberries every morning on vacation.

    I have fond childhood memories of my late Papa picking fresh blackberries every morning on vacation.

  • A secondary pattern inspired by vintage endpapers, a nod to my lifelong love of reading and a new chapter of our life together.

  • I also included flowers and bugs that my husband and I encounter on our daily dog walks in our Chicago neighborhood, like this sweet lily of the valley.

  • Another supplemental pattern inspired by vintage endpapers.

  • This pattern was intended to replicate the various intricate scrollwork designs my husband and I saw in gardens across China during our 2019 travels in the country.

  • I couldn't resist adding a dash of whimsy, which is how this "snail mail" illustration came to reside on the RSVP cards.

  • My primary pattern, a toile that combines Chinese flowers with Midwestern fauna, symbolizing a harmonious blending of our unique upbringings and heritages.

Baby’s Breath

As seen in StyleMePretty, a website that features “the most beautiful real weddings.”

One of several wedding invitation suites I designed for Paper Source. The process and reasoning that goes into the development of a non-custom invitation suite is necessarily different than designing something completely custom. It’s a balancing act. You’re making something that needs to be distinctive enough to differentiate it from other offerings on the market, but universally appealing so that it generates enough revenue to make its production worthwhile. The design can’t jeopardize sales of existing designs, but should copy successful elements and themes if it will lead to incremental sales.

But most of all, it needs to be pretty and feel special.

During the trend research period, I noticed baby’s breath making a comeback. At the time, the wedding and event industry was embracing baby’s breath- elevating, celebrating, and transforming this once-maligned filler flower through massive floral installations, ceremonial arches, and dyed rainbow centerpieces. Baby’s breath could be sweet and traditional or funky and modern.

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