image
 




The happy bride and groom...


 


Boxed Wedding Invitation Set




RSVP Card and Envelope

 


Cirque Du Soleil performers
greet guests


Tinned Itinerary

 


Personalized Layered, Hand-edged Menu/Place Card with
Swarovski crystal

 


Fantastic juggling

 


Wedding Program

 


Wedding Dinner Table Setting


Aisle Runner of seal brown shantung fabric with custom monogram and marriage date hand silk screen printed in silver metallic ink


Navid and Gia enjoy front row seats

  
  

Custom designed Wedding Invitations, Programs, Itineraries, and Personalized Menu Cards

Winner of the:

-  International 2006 ISES Esprit Award for Best Marketing
    Design Under $10,000

-  and the 2006 ISES/NACE Allie Award for Best Print Piece.
 

THE EVENT
The ceremony was exquisite.  The Bride and Groom wed under stars in the open air courtyard of the world renowned Cà ď Zan Mansion in Sarasota Florida.  The Bride wore a beaded Russian veil and mink cape over a corseted and sashed Monique Lhuillier wedding dress accented with silk roses, beads and silver crosses. 

From a sheltered walkway, the Bride dramatically entered the private, sculpture-bordered courtyard filled with family and friends from around the world. Young, hip and successful, our petite American blond and her 'hunka-hunka' Persian prince pledged their love to each other.   

The religious ceremony was followed by a short stroll to an elegant, outdoor seated Wedding Dinner.   The bride and groom were escorted to seats of honor and entertained during the lavish dinner by surreally dressed acrobats, strongmen and clowns from the internationally acclaimed Cirque Du Soleil.   This spectacular wedding was the featured wedding of the 2006 Summer edition of INSIDE WEDDINGS magazine.

PLANNING
Our designer Gwen Ware was flown to beautiful Sarasota Florida to meet the bride, her fiancé, and her parents, get a feel for the bride's personality and style, and to listen as well as participate in a free flow of thoughts and ideas as they toured the selected wedding venues.  While there, she conferred with international award winning event planner, caterer and 4-star chef Tim Lundy of Distinctive Design Events and international award winning wedding planner Karen Casey of Karen Casey Events about their plans for this one-of-a-kind destination wedding.  The three special events professionals formed a 'Wedding Dream Team' and discussed how we could each support the creative concepts of the other two and tightly wove their three disciplines together from beginning to end to create a seamlessly designed and absolutely to-die-for wedding.

EXPECTATIONS
The bride was Gia Ventola, a fashion designer whose creations are worn by singer/pop-star Britney Spears.  Gia wanted an boxed wedding invitation that.

  • expresses the level of "WOW" guests should expect at the elegant but fun wedding
  • is colored in shades of pewter, sable brown, retro hot line green and creamy grayish-white
  • has subtle influences from Persia, Russia and the Orient in honor of their guests from Iraq, Europe, China and America
  • had 'tons and tons of texture' in the invitation's papers
  • were accented with silver Christian crosses
  • Swarovski crystals
  • a disdain for bows
  • a preference for tightly knotted ribbons
  • protective shipping wrappers that were visually coordinated to the boxed wedding invitation

The bride and groom, her parents, and the professional planners agreed that the wedding plans, and the thousands of miles guests as far away as China would travel to attend the wedding demanded a collector's quality 'Got to Be There' Invitation and Collateral Print Pieces produced by The Electronic Pencil.

PROJECT DESIGN
This project required us to create several different wedding pieces that could stand alone in their own right, but were linked by design, color, material and font.  Our designer, Gwen Ware felt the infusion of Persian, Russian and Oriental influences should be subtle and intrinsic in the design.  For that reason, she selected handmade Japanese, Thai and American papers in shades of pewter, soft white with accents of blush and seal brown.  The end result was a wedding print package that thrilled our client and whose beauty, unique look and handcrafting will provide serious bragging rights for years to come.

THE WEDDING INVITATION
We began with the boxed Wedding Invitation Sets.  The invitation box was heavily influenced by an ancient Japanese Origami box pattern.  The box consisted of a separate top and bottom and was covered with pewter metallic Japanese Momi paper (originally used by Japanese priests for ceremonial garments) we hand laminated to the chipboard.  After cutting and folding the Origami box lids, we padded the insides of the lid and box and lined them with seal brown, silk Shantung fabric.

Rather than just placing the Cards on the floor of the box, we created a special, padded and silk Shantung covered  slant board to provide a better presentation of a tulle-wrapped packet of cards.  Each packet contained a Wedding Invitation, Travel Arrangements Card, RSVP Card and handmade RSVP Envelope, as well as a Travel Itinerary.  I designed a unique monogram for the couple and printed it on every card. 

The Cards were made from a handmade, highly textured mulberry paper from Thailand.  We hand-edged the the Thai paper, first in pale blush followed by a narrower band of copper metallic ink.  The cards were mounted on a specialty, American made silver-metallic cover weight paper that had the shimmer of 'snow in moonlight.'  We wrapped the stacked cards in a length of seal brown tulle and shaped the bow ends to resemble a flower.  In the center of each 'bow flower' we pinned a heavy silver cross broach we created and adorned with a 3mm Swarovski crystal.

We also designed and produced an attractive wrap-around corrugated shipping container for the boxed Wedding Invitation that would allow it to travel half-way around the world and arrive looking fresh.  We choose a heavy, kraft-colored, extra wide wale corrugated cardboard and paired it with a wrap-around mail label band cut from the text version of the silver metallic specialty paper on which the Cards were mounted.  Using the same fonts as those used of the Cards, we printed each guest's name and address on the silver mailing label in dark brown ink.  The mailing band was tightly wrapped around the assembled wedding invitation package and secured for the trip.  Every Wedding Invitation Box was hand-cancelled at the Post Office for better presence and to avoid any mishaps in post office equipment.

CHALLENGES
Client communication is key to any custom project.  In this case the person for whom we were creating, the bride - was hard to corner for creative chats.  She was a busy, working fashion designer who was constantly flying here, there and overseas nearly every day.

Gia and Gwen's creative talk sessions usually took place during early morning phone calls or Sunday afternoon chats.  Gia and Gwen also maintained daily contact through a private webpage created for Gia.  We create a private webpage for each client on our website where we keep them up to date on their project's process.  On Gia's webpage, we posted design sketches and revisions, font samples, magnified paper samples and photos of the project in progress.  And like many of our clients, Gia shared her webpage's address with her mother and friends so they could also follow the process and offer feedback.

WEDDING DELIVERABLES
The Electronic Pencil custom designed and handcrafted the following items for this wedding:

-  100 Boxed Wedding Invitations
-  75 Tinned Itineraries
-  150 Wedding Programs
-  150 Personalized Layered Menu/Place Cards
-  75 Monogrammed Certificate Envelopes
-  Six-foot long Hand-stenciled, Monogrammed Aisle Runner

BEACH PARTY
We also provided custom event print announcements for the bride's truly spectacular, pre-wedding beach party planned by Tim Lundy of Distinctive Design Events.  The party, lit by tall torches was held on the private beach of The Ritz Carlton,  Sarasota.  Guests lounged on huge, jewel-toned pillows on the sand in front of low tables piled high with the tastiest of treats as foot high ocean waves from a gentle sea and clear sky rumbled in yards away.  Karen Casey of Karen Casey Events and her staff were in attendance to insure that all guest needs were addressed.  The Electronic Pencil designed and handcrafted the following items for 'Gia's Beach Party':

-  100 Menu Cards designed hung with an oversized safety pin
    to the opulent table skirts
-  10 Table Signs
-  100 Guest Place Cards
-  100 Lobster Bibs

 

MORE AWARDS | 2006 Wedding | 2006 Gala Event
                                  2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000
                                  1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996

ORDER CUSTOM-DESIGNED ANNOUNCEMENTS | Order

 

Photographs by Maring Lifestyle Photography