Wedding Stationery Terms
When you are shopping for your wedding stationery, you may feel like a fish out of water. Here is a glossary of the wedding stationery terms that you will need to know to make choosing the perfect invitations a snap.
Engraving: This refers to a printing process in which a copper plate is engraved with your wedding invitation wording, inked, and run through a press to print the lettering onto the stationery. Engraving is easily identified by its raised lettering. The back of an engraved invitation will have an indentation behind the words, which is an easy way to distinguish it from thermography. It is true that engraving is costly, due to the step of making a unique etched copper plate for your order, but it is also the most elegant form of lettering. For a formal wedding or traditional wedding with the bride in a classic gown and pearl bridal jewelry, engraving is the best choice.
Letterpress: This style of printing has been around for hundreds of years, but it has only become popular for wedding invitations in the last decade or so. Letterpress is a technique in which moveable pieces of type are hand arranged in a printing press, and then the paper is rolled over it with a heavy roller. It is perhaps not quite as labor intensive as engraving, but it is close, and the pricing is fairly comparable as well. Letterpress invitations are very popular with brides who want a chic and contemporary look for their stationery, while still having the fine craftsmanship that has made engraving the gold standard for generations.
Thermography: Another technique in which the wedding invitation wording can be transferred to the paper. Thermography consists of an ink being printed over a fine powder to give the lettering a raised look. It is intended to mimic engraving, although anyone familiar with fine stationery will immediately know the difference. The telltale signs of “fake engraving” include no indentations on the reverse of the paper, shiny ink, and some subtle unevenness of the lettering. Being a machine made process, thermography is considerably less expensive than engraving or letterpress, although for a discriminating bride, that may not be reason enough to cut corners on her invitations. Old-fashioned etiquette mavens will say that if you want to save money, simple but honest flat printing is better than trying to mimic engraving with thermography.
Now that you are an expert on wedding stationery, get out there and start shopping for those perfect invitations!
Filed under Wedding Planning, pearl bridal jewelry | Tags: pearl bridal jewelry, wedding invitations, wedding stationary | Comment (0)Special Wedding Signage
When planning your wedding, there are a million tiny details to arrange. One of the ones that can be easily overlooked is the signage that you may need. Signs are often useful to provide special information to your guests. You will want to be certain to plan for signs well in advance, so that they can be made to coordinate with your wedding theme.
Types of signs that you may need include directions marking the path from the ceremony to the reception site, the room number for the ballroom at a hotel wedding, and even pointers to the restroom, if it is not obvious.
Although it would be functional, a generic sign certainly does not make much of a first impression. It would be like choosing a fabulous wedding gown and forgetting the custom bridal jewelry. Instead of a basic boring sign, create one that incorporates your wedding colors or motif. It will make a much more welcoming first impression.
In general, it would be nice to coordinate your special signs to the feeling of your wedding stationary suite for a consistent look throughout. For example, if your wedding stationary was done with formal engraving, your signage should be equally traditional. Brides who chose wedding invitations with handmade paper could use similar floral – flecked paper for all of their signs. Careful attention to even the smallest detail is exactly the sort of thing that will help to set your wedding apart.
Filed under Bridal Jewelry, Uncategorized, Wedding Jewelry, Wedding Planning | Tags: custom bridal jewelry, Wedding Planning, wedding signage, wedding stationary | Comment (0)