With another Syracuse winter sneaking up on us, this customization of Ben Whitla‘s Lumos design is feeling especially fitting for the season.  A combination of our charcoal and pool inks letterpress printed onto our snowy white 1-ply paper breathes a cool and modern breath into this popular design.  We owe the honor of printing this particular save the date to the ever-awesome gang downstate at Judy Paulen Designs Bloomingdales.

inks: charcoal + pool | paper: 1-ply white | save the date size: a6 |

This next real wedding united two Air Force members, so it seemed only fitting that we feature it on Veterans Day! Overflowing with glamorous details and thoughtful touches that reflect Brenna & Larry’s interests, it’s a celebration filled with timeless style. Brenna designed the stylish yet classic invitations and came to us for printing (we featured her beautiful invites on our blog back in March), and they really set the perfect tone for this 1930′s inspired wedding.

Can you share with us a bit about your wedding and your inspiration for the event?
The wedding was held at the Grand Bohemian Hotel in Asheville, North Carolina. I was an art major in college, and my husband studied in Germany for his degree. The hotel is in an artful German hunting lodge style, so that was inspiring in itself. We both have a love for Art Deco style, and 1930′s music and movies.

A special performance by Brenna’s sister (a trained opera singer!) added a lovely personal touch to Brenna & Larry’s ceremony – she sang a solo from Handel’s “Messiah”.

What advice do you have for couples currently planning a wedding?
Pick something inspirational and plan the wedding around it. For us, it was Busby Berkeley Films. All the black and white contrast and lavish sets helped make all the decisions about design quickly. Keep your venue in mind, too, and work with the details therein.

How did you choose your invitation design & ink colors?
I made the design myself, and trusted it to Bella Figura to make it happen in the highest caliber. The rest of the wedding stationery matched the design, so it was easy to continue the theme. I wanted the invitation to show off the good design, so it was a cream and black letterpress; very classic and always in style.

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In a unique twist on Beth Ann Seal‘s classic Palmas design, this invitation set features the exquisitely personal Belle hand calligraphy of Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls in place of the design’s original fonts.  The calligraphy adds a distinct mark of human touch, which is reinforced by the deep, tactile impression of the artisan letterpress printing.  Ink-less blind deboss printing for the art-deco inspired border keeps things subtle, while a bright clover envelope liner adds a splash of excitement to this chic and natural looking invitation set.

ink: black + blind deboss | paper: 2-ply ivory | invite size: f8 | liner: classic color in clover | edge painting: chartreuse | client coordinator: chris gannon | in-house designer: sarah walroth

We just adore these recently printed letterpress wedding invitations in our Lumos design (by Ben Whitla).  The couple chose to adhere their invitation to a striking black pocketfold.  These brilliant pocketfold enclosures hold the couples website card.  We love how pronounced the bride and groom’s names look in black ink and the antique gold ink makes for an excellent pairing! Perfect for a black and white wedding theme, these invitations have a spot-on contemporary feel (and check out their save the dates in a previous post)!

inks: black + antique gold | fonts: sans capitals + popular | paper: 1-ply white | invite size: a-7 | pocketfold: black | client coordinator: jessica hanaman | in-house designer: kyle laatsch

by Jessica Hanaman, Client Coordinator.

These custom, art deco inspired letterpress invitations were designed by the bride, Brenna, who paid us the great pleasure of working with her on printing her wedding invitations. We printed them at a custom size so Brenna could then adhere them to a black backer, paired perfectly with black lined envelopes. They were printed in black on our ivory cotton paper. Check out Brenna’s blog Bomb’s Away for more of her super cool style.

{Photos by Bomb’s Away.}

Around these parts, we can’t get enough of super cool save the dates. Add in great typography and these letterpress save the dates in our Lumos design are a crowd favorite around the studio. We printed them in a classic color combination of antique gold and black, paired with metallic gold edge painting for a look that is modern Art Deco-inspired and incredibly chic.

Every day our Bella Figura clients are inspirations to us. They have good tastes in invitations, of course, but they also have amazing talents at planning fabulous weddings. So with our new web site, we wanted to start profiling some of the best weddings of our clients. We’re just thrilled that our first Bella Figura real wedding is this lovely couple, Allan & Brian, with a really spectacular wedding. When we saw photographs from their celebration at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, all of us here were just floored by the creativity of everything about the wedding. Allan & Brian choose the Circolo 2 design in cardinal and pewter, and their invitation really captured the spirit of their wedding. And then Allan sent us some amazing writing about the wedding too, the importance of the ceremony, and his thoughts about love that described, for us, what weddings are really about.

What was your inspiration for the wedding?
The arts are very important to us, which is one important reason why we chose Disney Concert Hall as the venue. We also both have an affinity for the music and styles of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. We wanted an event that was stylish and elegant but also fun. We opted for a black tie-optional champagne cocktail event. We love art deco style, so we wanted something inspired by that sensibility. But because the concert hall is so modern, we didn’t want a slavish re-creation of art deco. Instead, we wanted a fusion which was a challenge to pull off, but ended up working really well.

Tell us about the proposal.
It would be great if there were a story with lightning bolts or roses or bended knee in the moonlight. However, after 18 years together there was no such moment. Actually, we were quite surprised when the California Supreme Court handed down a decision allowing same-sex marriage in the state. Beginning that evening, friends and family started calling to ask, “So, are you going to do it?” We were both surprised to discover that we had repressed how much we wanted to get married — how important it was to have an event that included the people who mattered most to us. And so after a few days of weighing the options (such as a small ceremony at the county clerk office) we decided we wanted a real wedding. And, with Proposition 8 on the November ballot, we felt we had a brief window in which we could confidently plan something.

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