One and Only Paper

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

They were getting married at a fairy tale-esque country club in Greenville, Delaware, so we knew we wanted the invitations to be refined and elegant, but also bring in their sweet proposal story. 

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

I painted moonflowers as a subtle eclipse reference, and kept their letterpressed type refined and light. 

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

I loved painting the map of the spots they loved in Greenville!

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

We tied the whole suite together with a deckled edge vellum wrap, and a lush silk bow.

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

My favorite element was the total eclipse of the sun stamps for the outer envelope, and the reply envelope! I know I’m hard on the USPS, but these stamps were the best, and I was so excited to use them for a project. 

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

When you touch them, the heat of your finger reacts with the ink to reveal the moon! How cool is that! It was the perfect final touch, and I loved the reference to their love story.

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Luckily, I don’t think that’s actually true. Beyond the fact that I’ve heard a lot of stories of people saving my invitations because they think they’re so beautiful (hair flip), I also think we should look at the bigger context of a wedding. It is an event, which means it intrinsically comes with impermanence. You don’t get to keep your venue, the food is consumed, flowers die, makeup gets washed off, dresses are often only worn once, etc. There is really very little you get to actually keep from your wedding.

Probably the only thing the client got to keep in this picture was the table number. Photo by Mikkel Paige. 

But you do get to keep your invitations. Not all of them, obviously, but long after the wedding is over, your invitation will still be there. Many people even frame and hang their invitations in their homes! When you work with a custom stationer, you are essentially commissioning an artist to create something just for you. I strive to create heirloom quality pieces that will be treasured for a long time, and long after the wedding itself is a distant memory, you will still be able to hold that invitation in your hand and remember your event.

photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

I also loved their reply card - it was just a traditional reply card, but in adding a deckled edge, we added a little interest and texture. I referenced that in their reply envelope, with the illustrations being cut off by a line, to make way for the address.

photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

We went a little lighter for their accommodations card and featured an illustration of their wedding venue. I loved how the watercolor softened the whole look and added a little whimsy to their suite.

photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Probably my favorite element was their envelope liner. I knew I wanted to do something dark, floral and moody, but I wasn’t sure exactly how I would get the colors I wanted. I ultimately ended up scanning flowers from my then officemates Wylde, and combining them digitally, which gave the perfect moody, somewhat surreal look. Using something photorealistic and dark was such an unexpected touch, but I truly loved how it all came together.

photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

We tied their suite together with a gold velvet ribbon and used a wax seal of their sweet husky dog to seal it all together, which I obviously think was just the best. Dogs on wax seals are truly my love language.

Photo by Theo Milo Photo

Your wedding day stationery offerings will vary from stationer to stationer, but we offer a few standard things:

Photo by Theo Milo Photo

Favors and customized items (so like cocktail napkins, bottle huggers, and matchbooks, for a few examples), printed signage (either paper, mounted on foamcore, printed on acrylic, or engraved on acrylic or wood), and printed paper goods (programs, menus, printed escort cards, etc).

Photo by Amanda Castle Photography

The best time to really dig into your wedding day stationery is right after the invitation design is complete. As you go through the planning process and finalize with your caterer and venue, your needs will change. While I’m happy to give general quotes, it saves a lot of back and forth if we wait until a bit further along in the process.

Photo by Dana Cubbage Weddings

10 weeks out from your wedding is the best time to order your wedding day stationery, with proof approval four weeks before your wedding date. While you may need to wait to finalize your numbers until all the replies come back, in the meantime we can have the wording finalized, the designs complete, and a pretty good idea of how many pieces you will need. Your wedding day stationery can take between 2 and 3 weeks to produce, and I aim to have clients picking up their stationery at least a week before their wedding. I don’t want  to add anything to your  plate the week of your wedding

Photo by Amanda Castle Photography

Tone on tone. This is having a big moment with me right now, and I looove it. It’s understated, textural, and totally fresh feeling, and perfect for the warmer tones traditionally associated with a fall or winter wedding.

photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Transparency. Vellum has been having a moment with my clients for a while, and I don’t see it going away any time soon. I love the thought of raising the bar by using colored vellum, or printing patterns or washes on vellum to elevate it. While clear acrylic is still going strong also, I love the thought of playing with opacity by either adding color, or using other materials, like thin cloth, cloudy paper, or even layering inks using processes like screenprinting.

photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Bright colors. I think that many couples are moving away from the classic gold/white/blush look, and moving into more saturated and vibrant colors. I love the thought of combining this with tone on tone and having a super rich, vibrant suite.

photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair, calligraphy by Judith Browne

Texture. I’ve been getting more requests for handmade paper (which I obviously love), and I can’t wait to explore textural elements even more, from things like acrylic, organic materials, folded paper, laser cutting, and fabrics!

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

We went with a lush floral illustration stamped in champagne foil for their invitation and paired with dusty blue letterpress text. 

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Their map was filled with their favorite local spots - each one watercolor painted by me! We incorporated those elements throughout all of the pieces of their suite, perfect for a textural, elegant look when it was all together. 

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

I particularly loved the color palette for this - pairing the burgundy with grey-blue, and touches of pink felt so fresh and new, especially with the champagne and white papers.

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Photo by Mikkel Paige, calligraphy by Judith Browne Calligraphy

That’s a question I get a lot, and the answer is, unfortunately, nowhere! I can understand why it is tempting to cover all of your bases, but having your registry information on your invitation is actually considered to be a pretty big faux pas.

The reason for this is that while most of your guests will want to bring a gift to your wedding, they are not required to, and putting that information in your invitation will give the impression that you think that they should bring a gift. It’s kind of silly: you know they want to bring a gift, and they know you would obviously love a gift, but you definitely don’t want to seem like you’re asking for a gift. Very proper guests would consider that offensive.

An example of the vintage art I’ll occasionally work with. We paired the vintage florals with a custom watercolor map. Photo by Mikkel Paige.

I create almost all of the artwork that I use in my wedding invitation designs. The only time I won’t create the artwork is when I’m using vintage illustrations, as they are older and a different style than my paintings. But the vast, vast majority of the time it’s a painting or drawing by me.

An example of my typical setup. Sometimes I work at a desk, other times I’m painting at night and paint at my coffee table so I can watch tv and hang with David. 

For my watercolor work, I’ll usually start by sketching out lightly in pencil what I would like to paint. Sometimes I go for a looser look, but usually I have to put pencil to paper to make sure it doesn’t look weird in the end. For my venue or pet portraits, these sketches are a lot more detailed, and for something like a floral painting, they’re a lot looser.

Then, I’ll actually create the painting. For each project, I’ll usually try to make a few different options for each piece I would like to use. Often for my designs, I’ll pull from my pretty extensive library of artwork, so if I’m doing something custom, I like to make sure I have a lot of new pieces to add to the library. Paintings can take me days to complete - I always think I can just bang something out, but it actually can be a fairly slow process.

Once the paintings are complete and dry, I’ll scan them, and then digitize the artwork. I’ll be honest, I kind of hate this part, as it is sooo slow and nitpicky. It’s too boring to explain, but basically, it’s color correcting, then going around and tracing each part of the art to pick it off the paper background, and then more color correcting. It can take days, depending on how involved the piece is. This is when I listen to lots of podcasts and complain to David about how hard my job is.

After the piece is digitized, it’s ready to go into the design. This is my favorite part, as it a) means digitizing is done, and b) it’s so fun to see it all come together!

This suite used both watercolor and line drawings. I created the line drawings on my iPad! Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

If I’m creating a line drawing, it’s a little bit different of a process, because I do most of my line drawing on my iPad. I use a program called Adobe Sketch, which has been a real game-changer in terms of creating drawings that don’t look too digital from the start. The great thing about that is that there’s no tough digitizing part - I just pull the drawing off my iPad and I’m good to go.

I generally paint surrounded by beverages - it’s like a fun challenge to not drink paint water, or dip my paintbrush in tea. 

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Staring with the invitation, one of my favorite details that we, along with their insanely talented wedding planner, Stephanie of Viva L’Event brought throughout their entire day, was the crest I created for them. Going for a more modern monogram, we included soft watercolor flowers, and their two sweet pups, Colonel Mustard (the best name for a dog) and Larry. You know I’m a sucker for including your pets in your invitation, and this was no different - I loved painting those sweet boys.

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Their invitation was letterpressed, which I always recommend when you want to keep the typography simple and traditional - when you add cotton paper and the tactility of letterpress, it just elevates it to a completely new level, and the piece suddenly feels so special.

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Another favorite card was their morning-after brunch invitation - I went nuts with the flowers on this one, but the coolest part was the little bits of gold foil detail that we added to the flowers. It was a really subtle effect that made it feel so special in person.

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

I loved creating their map of Charlottesville, to show their guests all the city had to offer. I actually went to Charlottesville with David on an anniversary trip about a month before Lucy and Van’s wedding, and it was really cool to see all the places I painted in real life!

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Another great card was their rehearsal dinner invitation - we went with blue paper just to break up all the white cards we already had, and the gold foil monogram just took it over the top. Paired with the white digital ink printing, it feels so fresh and springy, I love it!

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Tying it all together is the most epic belly band I’ve ever created - custom tissue paper, tied with an oversized grosgrain ribbon, and topped with a gold foil monogram card. I knew this was going to be a really special weekend for their guests, and I wanted it to feel like they were opening a beautiful gift - I hoped the experience of seeing the invitation would give them a taste of the wonderful experience of the wedding weekend to come.

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

We used a french blue outer envelope to hold it all together, and the envelope liner featured a custom illustration of the tree that Lucy and Van were to be married under. It was seeing that tree that sold them on their venue, and so we definitely wanted to make sure it was featured somewhere in their invitation suite.

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Generally speaking, my stance is that when it’s your wedding, you should do whatever feels right to you. I think it’s important for your guests to feel comfortable and welcomed, and that’s really the point of etiquette: to make sure everyone knows what to do in any given situation. I like to educate my clients on what the ‘proper’ thing to do is, but at the end of the day, it’s their wedding, they know what would work best for their guests, and I’m here to make it easier for them, not to judge them because they opted for an online reply.

That being said, I have three things to consider before you opt for the online reply:

Your older guests will be confused. 

If Grandma Nancy doesn’t own a computer, she’s probably not going to go down to the library and log on to rsvp to your wedding. If you’re just inviting a few older folks, that’s probably not a big deal to check in on them and get a personal reply, but if you know a significant portion of your guest list is older and not super computer literate, it might be worth it to just do a traditional reply card instead.

Sometimes people don’t take the online reply as seriously. 

It’s hard enough to get people to reply to your wedding anyway, but something about not having to send a card back means that people might try to wait until the last minute, and then even forget to respond. Something I always recommend is to include a separate card in your invitation suite, no matter if it’s an online reply or a physical reply. Having the separate card means that it will draw a little more attention to the fact that there is still something for your guests to do, and hopefully make it a little easier for them to respond.

It’s really fun to get replies back in the mail. 

It’s so exciting to check the mail every day and see who got back to you, and those little cards can become keepsakes when you’re also getting personal notes from loved ones. I ended up saving most of our reply cards because they were so sweet, and such a great snapshot of an exciting time in our lives. When so much of wedding planning can feel hectic, getting those reply cards back can feel like a really nice moment to pause and just enjoy the excitement.

So there you have it! Online replies: not a terrible faux pas, but also not quite as fun as a physical reply card!

Caspian reflects upon the joy of a tidy home. 

A clean house is a must. 

I work from home, so this is doubly important, but it adds to my feeling of chaos 1000% if my surroundings are cluttered and dirty. Generally, I try to make sure everything in my home has a place, and regularly do Kon-Mari style purges to make sure everything is sparking joy, which super helps. When I find myself feeling really overwhelmed, taking 15 minutes to tidy my immediate area can really help me reset, and focus.

Journaling. 

I don’t journal regularly, and I’m sure when I’m long gone anyone who finds these journals are going to be like ‘who was this psycho and how did she manage to survive for as long as she did?’ because I just use them for stress relief. I don’t know about you, but when I’m feeling crazed, my mind is going a mile a minute, and sometimes just brain dumping all of that onto a page really helps me feel like I can focus and relax.

A peek at my February calendar - I screenshotted this in the middle of January - it is so nice to be able to plan ahead. 

Asana. 

I recently started putting everything I need to do into Asana, and it has been a game. Changer. I can pull up a calendar view of all tasks assigned to me, and it’s been so helpful, in terms of knowing what I absolutely need to accomplish in a day, feeling like I have everything I need to do documented (so I don’t have to waste time worrying about it), and allows me to plan ahead.

Piggybacking off Asana, 

I also have started batch working a little bit more, and it is honestly the best. 

When I’m looking at my calendar view in Asana, I can match tasks that are in the same category (so I might have one day where I design a bunch of invitations, and then another day for assembly, etc), and best of all, it’s allowed me to stop using my email as a to-do list.

Me, not checking my email. 

Stop using your email as a to-do list! 

I have recently implemented a rule that I can only check my email when I’m prepared to take action on my email. So, if I read it, I have to respond to it or put whatever action is associated with it into Asana. I’ve started checking my email only once or twice a day (honestly some days I am more successful at this than others, but even with my lack of willpower, it's still super helpful. Side note: did you know that checking your email triggers the same response in your brain as playing slot machines?)  This has resulted in a couple of changes in my workflow. I feel like I’m more responsive and communicative to my clients, because I’m not just letting things linger for days on end, and I have freed up SO MUCH TIME, because I’m focusing on what is truly important for me to accomplish on any given day, and not letting email to-dos derail my productivity.

Sometimes the mountains you climb are in your mind, other times they’re literal mountains.

Exercise regularly. 

This can feel counterproductive because why would you want to take time away from working when there’s already so much to do?! And sometimes I’ll definitely skip a workout because I feel overwhelmed. But, I’ve found when I can remain disciplined, it’s really helpful, not only in managing any anxiety or stress I feel around my workload but also with my productivity. The best time for me to work out is in the middle of the day, and knowing I have a break coming up means I can really put my head down and knock stuff out in the morning, and I often return to my work with more energy, and in a better mood.

Cut myself a break. 

I truly believe you can have it all, but not at the same time. I can be killing it at work, but maybe I’m not cooking healthy, delicious meals every night, or being a very present friend, or living up to all the high standards I set for myself. It’s okay. Sometimes it’s okay to be giving your all in one area of your life, and just getting by in the other areas. If it’s going on for too long, that’s probably indicative of a bigger problem, but the truth is, sometimes things get busy and something has to slide. On any given week, I might be trying to stay off my phone and read books, but after a super busy week maybe I just want to lay in bed and swan dive into instagram, and that’s not the worst thing in the world.

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

We started with her save the dates, which featured a gold foil illustration of the Graylyn Estate, romantic typography, and soft cotton paper.

Photo by Amanda Castle Photography, florals by Green Bee Floral Designs, calligraphy by Calligraphy by Carole

Moving on to her invitations, we commissioned custom oversize handmade grey paper, and combined letterpress and foil on those bad boys, cutting the edges straight to keep it from looking too messy. 

Photo by Amanda Castle Photography, florals by Green Bee Floral Designs

You don’t often see straight edges on handmade paper, and I’m here for it. In person, the texture is truly lovely, and the straight edges not only add an elegance and refinement to the whole look. It also allows printers to run several processes on the paper - it’s basically impossible to get the registration lined up correctly if the edges of the paper are uneven. So, kind of a win win here.

Photo by Amanda Castle Photography, florals by Green Bee Floral Designs

We finished this suite off with a vellum belly band and an oversize wax seal, and grey thread holding it all together. The wax seal was just perfect for this look, and you know I love a tone on tone, so the greys all coming together really made my heart sing, haha!

Photo by Amanda Castle Photography

Moving on to the wedding day, I created custom drink huggers for Taylor and Matt, featuring their crest, as well as menus for their guests, and stickers for their popcorn favors (it was Chicago mix, meaning caramel and cheddar, and I’ve now been craving that combination for months). 

Photo by Amanda Castle Photography, florals by Green Bee Floral Designs

I think the overall effect was so pretty, and honestly, their entire wedding was just stunning. Their photographer,  Amanda Castle did an incredible job capturing the event, and I’m so lucky to be able to share her photos with you.

Photo by Amanda Castle Photography

My brother in law wrote his own name (M)att____ on our reply card, which I loved, but the M does not exist just to make people whose names start with M’s lives a little easier.

It’s just the traditional way of indicating that you should write down your name on that line - M is the first letter of Mr., Mrs., or Ms., so it’s kind of a one size fits all situation. I’ve found that most people know what to do, but if you think it’s weird, you could always swap the M out for Name(s) instead, just to make it clearer!

Me, wearing a shirt I designed and screenprinted. NGL, I still think this is a cool design. 

It all started back in college when I was majoring in art and design. I had chosen this major because I felt like it would afford me the most options in what I wanted to do, but now that I was actually in it, I felt like the major wasn’t providing me with a clear path forward. A lot of my friends were in graphic design, and I was really interested in the things they were doing - I started sitting in on their classes, and doing their projects on my own time. I pretty quickly decided that I want to switch majors, and started my sophomore year as a graphic design student.

I really loved my time as a design student, and I thought when I got out of school I would move away, work at a boutique design firm, and be incredibly successful by the time I was 25, at which point I would have a meet-cute with some hunky guy and get married when I was 30. To me, that felt like the clearest path to success and fulfillment.

What actually happened was a little different 

I started working at internships for design in college - I needed them to be paid, which meant that my options were pretty limited.  Boutique design agencies were totally off the table, as they pretty much only offered unpaid internships. I still feel strongly that if you can’t afford to compensate someone for their time, you probably shouldn’t have an intern, but unfortunately, that’s not the norm in the creative industry. While I was in school, I worked for a distance education group that was affiliated with my university, a teacher’s group, and my school’s sustainability office. 

A sustainability walking map I designed for my internship - these projects definitely helped me realize my love of print, and looking back it’s kind of nuts I got to own so many cool projects as an intern! 

Particularly at my last internship, I learned a LOT about working with clients, as I was the only designer in the office - it was extremely valuable to learn how to deal with people who weren’t approaching creative problems from at all the same place as I was. 

I also got to create several annual reports, which involved some sweet graphs. 

I would love to go back and sit in on some of the meetings I was a part of at that time… I was obviously very new to professional situations, and I’d be in meetings with 10-15 people, most of whom were middle-aged men, trying to lead them through a design process I myself was just figuring out. I’m sure I was not nearly as smooth as I thought I was, but I definitely learned a lot!

Making some truly puzzling photographic choices during this time. This suite was thermography, which felt v fancy for someone who had never done anything beyond a laser printer. 

During this time, I designed my first invitation suite for my cousin, Alyssa! Her support in such a tangible way means so much to me… I had no idea what I was doing, didn’t know anything about the wedding planning process, and thought the whole thing was easy - I was probably kind of obnoxious to work with, haha! But I loved seeing what I had made come to life, and it was my first taste of how awesome print design can be. I was sooo proud of these and so excited for her to send them out!

The hilarious part of all of this is that at the time, I distinctly remember my fellow students and I talking about wedding stationery and working for yourself like it was the lowest form of design possible… like these were last resort options for an actual career. Little hipster Alison had a pretty big dose of humility coming her way!

You know what wasn’t depressing? Adopting Caspian as a graduation gift to myself. 

Graduating from college was a depressing event in my life. First, I looooved college. I loved the fresh starts of a new semester, I love learning, and projects, and the library, and living in what felt like a little big city where you could walk everywhere - I was so sad to leave it all behind. Second, I graduated at maybe the worst time to have a nonessential job. Out of the 40ish people in my graduating class, one person had a job lined up after college. One. Those boutique design firms I was so sure I was gonna work for were straight up bare bones, like they weren’t even taking unpaid interns because they didn’t have enough work.  Lucky for me, I got to keep my internship at the sustainability office for another year after college, but I really kind of hated my life at that time… I was applying for a million jobs, not hearing back from anyone, I didn’t get to be a student anymore, and things were not going how I thought they should. I applied for so many jobs at that time, like literally anything: Victoria’s Secret (didn’t have enough experience), Starbucks (never heard back), a Segway tour guide (no explanation but not getting that job was definitely a low point). I worked random jobs as a babysitter/personal assistant, and cleaned my mom’s house for extra cash, I even took a disastrous unpaid internship for a few weeks (they told me they were going to be hiring a junior designer soon, so I thought that would be my way in, except my first day was also their new junior designer’s first day… and they had little dogs that pooped and peed inside, and whoever saw it first had to clean it up. They also had no work for me to do, it’s like the only thing in my life that I haven’t felt bad about quitting). I sent out hundreds of unanswered cold emails and started trying to freelance.

A website design I did way back in the day. 

I cast a pretty wide net at first for freelancing - I did websites, branding, random design projects, I started a greeting card shop on Etsy, and you guessed it, I even did an occasional wedding invitation. 

Branding for crackers - I was so proud of this project. 

At this point, it was mostly friends and family who were getting married, but I had a lot of fun with those projects and started thinking that maybe wedding invitations would be easy money (lol again at little Alison). After a while of doing this, my internship ended, and I started trying to make it work full time. I began to refine my offerings, and my now husband and I started focusing on creating websites for small businesses, and I also did wedding stationery.

A table number I created for a styled shoot before I was really even a stationer. I thought I was so slick with the foil paper. 

The wedding stationery work was fairly sporadic. I was focusing more on the website design, and that was growing slowly. The only problem was that I really did not enjoy it. Website design started to feel repetitive, I didn’t like working with small business owners, and I particularly did not enjoy the fact that website projects can literally drag on forever. Every time I thought I had completed a project, one more small to do would pop up, and so on and so on. Around my 24th birthday, I had a small crisis, one where I was like WHAT am I doing with my life?! I could not see a way forward with website design, and to be honest, it was suuuch a grind, I felt like I was hardly making any money, and I didn’t even really like doing it.

I remember being on a long walk with David, and just talking out all of my options. I decided I wanted to do something event-based, and extremely briefly thought about being a wedding planner, and then immediately realized that I would not be good at that at all. This brought me back to wedding stationery. It’s something I had some experience with at this point but hadn’t really committed to it, and it felt like a really good fit - I love weddings, I liked that the project had an end date, and I love print work. Wedding stationery also meant that I could play with unique printing methods that commercial print work often didn’t have the budget for, and I felt like I already had my foot in the door a little bit.

It was around this time that I also decided to ask my friend Gabie if she wanted to be my business partner. She was living in California at the time, and we had bonded over our shared love of stationery, and doing crafts for her wedding, so it felt like it could be a natural fit.

After Gabie and I decided to start working together, I also had a job fall into my lap. I started working at Videri Chocolate Factory as a bar wrapper, which was really perfect for me at the time since we were just getting One + Only Paper started. So there was a lot going on.

Our first styled shoot! Photo by Becci Ames. 

Gabie and I started out by creating a ton of sample invitations and staging a styled shoot at the Merrimon-Wynne House. This is also when I started getting into watercolor. It was a crazy time. Gabie was in the process of moving back to North Carolina, I was finishing up some last website clients, we were both working other jobs, and trying to get this dream going. I remember launching the One + Only Paper instagram account, and feeling so excited and discouraged at the same time… we had like 20 followers, all of whom we knew, and it was just like, will anyone ever hire us?

Our very first instagram post. S/O to the ten people who liked this post. 

Slowly we started to gain some traction, with small jobs at first, and then bigger invitation clients. More importantly, we got the business side of things set up (I say ‘we’, but honestly that was all Gabie), and slowly started to figure out a process, and how we wanted to work.

The weirdest part about all of this is that this is when I started to feel comfortable being a business owner. Back when I was freelancing, I was so adamant that I was a freelancer and not a business owner, I guess because it felt too scary? It’s crazy, because now I love a lot of the challenges that come along with being a business owner, but I felt so afraid to own that title for so long. I guess I had to grow into it.

Things were getting busier at One + Only Paper, and around this time is when Gabie and I decided to part ways. At least from my perspective, it was a positive step forward for both of us. Starting a business is stressful and intense, and a process that lasts for years, and we decided that it would be better for both of us if that wasn’t a marathon we ran together. We’re still friends, and I owe Gabie a lot - I know that One + Only Paper would not be where it is today if it wasn’t for her huge part in building the foundation of this company, and I will always be grateful for that.

After our split, I pretty much put my head down and started working hard to achieve my goals. I learned so much that following year. It was the first time I had to manage multiple client timelines, and I learned a lot about setting expectations, building relationships with my printers, and how to manage my time. The year after that felt like one step forward and two steps back - I was busy with clients all year, but I was also SUPER busy with clients all year. I barely had a minute to breathe, much less figure out how to improve my processes or do anything else to drive my business forward.

And that brings me to today! In some ways, 2019 feels like a fresh start for me - at the end of last year I had some time to reflect on what I learned in 2018 and put a few things I’d been thinking about for a long time in motion, and I’m super excited to see what the future holds. I’ve learned so much in the past couple of years, and this feels to me like the year that I’m going to put it all together and see what I can really do.

photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

Jamie was super fun to work with - she and Trey both work in education, and they were just refreshingly down to earth, and also super into the paper details, which of course I loved. I love to work with someone with a vision, and she definitely had one that was a joy to execute.

photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

I loved how fresh and modern the geometric accents made this suite feel - we stuck with more traditional fonts, the color palette was definitely traditional, and adding in the lines could have felt weird or trendy, but it all just worked. The sharpness plays off the soft watercolor florals so well, I think it’s really fun.

photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

I think my favorite detail in this suite is the envelope liner. It’s crazy how these little details can just take things to a whole different level, and I felt like the envelope liner instantly pulled this all together. The watercolor painting was slightly different from my usual style, so of course, I had a great time getting out of my comfort zone just a little bit, and it’s actually inspired me to begin exploring that style more in the future.

photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

This is a little tricky for me to answer, because strictly speaking, it is not considered proper etiquette to state who is NOT invited on the invitation. Your guests should know who is invited from the outer envelope, where it may say, ‘Mr. and Mrs. John Smith’, and not ‘The Smith Family’, and then if you want to be extremely specific, I always recommend adding inner envelopes, which will list out each guest, (‘John Smith, and Jane Smith’), in this example.

Photo by Mikkel Paige, photo styling by Janet St. Clair

While that should make it clear to your guests who’s actually invited to your wedding, another great trick to use is to put a line on your reply card that says ___ of ___ seats have been reserved in your honor. You’ll fill in the second blank with the number of guests in that household who are invited, and then your guests will fill in the first blank with the number of people who are actually coming.

Sometimes, clients will worry that despite all that, people will still want to bring their kids. I get it. I had several uninvited guests come to my wedding, and it was really frustrating! Another trick I like to employ is to use your website as the bad guy - if you have information directing guests to your wedding website, you can definitely include a line somewhere in there about how children are not allowed at your venue, or you wish you could invite children but you aren’t, etc, etc.

If, despite all this, you’re still worried about people bringing their kids to your wedding, and really want to put that line on your invitation or reply card somewhere here’s my opinion:

Are there just a couple of people in particular that you’re worried about? I’d recommend speaking to them directly after the invitations go out, and reassuring them that you love little Jimmy, and wish he could be there but this will be an adults-only affair.

You’ll also get some super cute pics if kids are invited to your wedding! Photo from my own wedding, at the Merrimon-Wynne House, taken by Brett & Jessica. 

Consider: would it really be that bad if someone slipped through the cracks and brought their kid? Children are often the most enthusiastic wedding guests, and on a day that’s about merging families, one or two kids being there won’t ruin your wedding. If anything, it will make it less fun for the parents, and you probably won’t even really notice. That being said, I know sometimes that it would actually be a problem if a kid shows up, whether it’s because the venue is not child-friendly, or maybe it’s a really poorly behaved child, or whatever. Which brings me to my final point: