Bespoke Wedding Stationery | Wedding Calligraphy | Staunton, Virginia
Gold foil + letterpress + all the greenery means this wedding and their custom stationery *might* just be one of my all time favorites! As Katie + Elliott’s 1st anniversary is fast approaching (HAPPY ANNIVERSARY Y”ALL!) I thought it might be time for me to stop hoarding all their beautiful images to myself and actually share their wedding love story!
I’m pretty sure I got goosebumps the first time Katie and I talked! I had serious love for her wedding inspiration, a romantic, vintage-bohemian-chic outdoor wedding with a color palette of off white, wine, greenery and gold. Katie + Elliott really wanted their wedding to be an intimate and family oriented affair that made their guests feel loved. I love that Katie + Elliott embraced that a wedding is not just about two people getting married but two families becoming one, it’s about honoring your most loved and dear friends and family for making the journey to support you as you commit yourselves to each other. Every detail was purposefully thought through and Katie + Elliott truly honored each of their guests.
Katie is just epically stunning!
How sweet are these two reading each others letters?!
Katie + Elliott’s custom bespoke save the date set the stage for their stunning wedding! Vintage botanical illustrations on soft cotton paper with hand torn deckled edges were the perfect introduction for their guests to their wedding.
Their incredible bespoke wedding stationery suite centered around the double thick letterpress and gold foil invitation with wine edge paint. The invitation was paired with a green letterpress reply card, a vintage botanical illustration liner in the most perfect green envelope with gold calligraphy and hand applied gold leaf edging. They invited every guest to after dinner drinks, such a sweet gesture for all their guests, so we included an insert card printed in wine colored ink to let their guests know.
I seriously cried when I saw they had a framed invitation in the room while they got ready!
For their day of stationery we featured hand torn deckled edges, gold calligraphy and hand applied gold leaf.
THIS TREE IS EVERYTHING! Katie shared her inspiration for this tree draped in florals as the backdrop for their ceremony and I was so excited to see how it turned out! I just love this tree SO MUCH!
Just look at how happy they are! THIS is why I love working in weddings! It’s all about the love y’all!
These bridesmaids just slayed!!!
Katie’s bouquet is so gorgeous! And that flower crown!
I know, again with the trees, but LOOK AT THESE ESCORT CARDS! Hand torn deckled edge escort cards written in gold ink pinned to a tree, it couldn’t be better if you tried!
Katie incorporated lots of greenery and her reception was lush with garden vibes!
Each place setting was set with these vintage botanical menus atop a gold charger and aubergine napkins.
The first dance, such a beautiful moment!
Sorry I couldn’t help but feature my two new favorite trees again!
The head table was long wooden farmhouse tables with a lush greenery garland runner down the center and each seat had a place card with gold calligraphy and hand applied gold leaf. I spy with my little eye the new *Mrs. Wilson*!
Katie + Elliott’s tent was lit with the most magical floral hanging chandeliers one ever did see!
And let’s not forget the cake! Lush florals, drippy goodness and the gold leaf are perfection!
Gorgeous mountain view at Gaie Lea do not disappoint!
Look at those two walking into forever!
Happy first anniversary Katie + Elliott! I loved every minute working with y’all! Your wedding was absolutely perfect and am so excited to be sharing your beautiful wedding!
And for even more beauty check out their wedding video!
Engagement | Love Story | Charlottesville, Virginia
This love story is a little bit different, Kristen is one of my best friends and I have known her for 12 years. Kristen and I went to college together and are sorority sisters, although we are far from the typical sorority girls. Kristen stood by my side as I said “I do” and she has always been the best Auntie Kristen to Grayson (and now Emory). We’ve remained close even through multiple moves to many different states, so of course when I first met Pat I was going to scrutinize everything because Kristen deserves only the best!
I remember the first time I met Pat, Grayson and I had come up to Virginia Beach for a weekend visit and Pat had suggested we all went to a beer festival. That was a win right off the bat! Pat was so great with Grayson (I mean he is a pretty fun kid haha) and didn’t just dismiss his presence but interacted with him, played with him. You could tell there was something special about Pat, he didn’t pretend to be a good person, he is a good person. Seeing Kristen and Pat together made it instantly clear they were made for each other. Their personalities compliment each other so well and I immediately saw they were such a great match. Pat is incredibly smart, kind, laid back, down for a good time and from the beginning has always been a supportive partner for Kristen. I may have scrutinized Pat with a fine tooth comb but in the end I think Pat is perfect for Kristen!
I have loved getting to know Pat over the years and was so incredibly excited when he popped the question, on my birthday no less! Pat planned a weekend trip to Boston where they explored the city, tasted lots of great beer and saw the sights. At the end of their trip they went to see a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park, even though Pat is a die-hard Yankees fan. Now Kristen is a HUGE Red Sox fan but had never been to Fenway Park so she was thrilled to say the least. Pat, the rascal he is, knew Kristen didn’t want to be the center of attention so he set it up to propose on the jumbotron! The premise was they were going to do a trivia game to be “fans of the game” where the prize was to be featured on the jumbotron for a wave but little did Kristen know Pat was going to ask her the question of a lifetime…in front of thousands of people! She said yes (well more shook her head yes and accepted the ring) and we literally started planning their wedding the next day!
Weddings like this are so special to me, I get to be a part of their love story and wedding in more than just paper. Not only do I get to design their wedding, create their paper and be a bridesmaid, but I get to witness one of my best friends marry her best friend! And I couldn’t be more excited for these two to start the next chapter of their lives as husband and wife next weekend! And yes I will be bawling, that’s inevitable!
Here’s to a beautiful wedding for Kristen + Pat, surrounded by their friends, family and great beer (see a trend here! just wait!) and a start to an even more beautiful marriage!
My sweet friend Krista of Krista Joy Photography took our maternity and family lifestyle photography session and I couldn’t be more in love with these images! They captured such a unique chapter in our lives and I am so excited to share them! We started a tradition while I was pregnant of pancakes on Sunday morning. I had such bad food aversions that carbs and sweets were about the only things I could eat so pancakes became a staple. I wanted to capture this season of our loves so making pancakes during our session seemed like the perfect choice!
I didn’t share as much about my pregnancy and there was a reason for that, I didn’t have an easy one. I didn’t know what the outcome would finally be and it was hard for me to share that, so I didn’t share the hard stuff, only the good stuff. But now that Emory is here I’m ready to share so here is a letter I wrote to my sweet baby girl about her pregnancy.
Dear Emory Willow,
I could never quite bring myself to write this while I was pregnant. Your pregnancy was not an easy one for me, especially when compared to your brother’s pregnancy. It was like night and day. Almost as soon as we found out we were expecting I was sick and not vomiting sick but feeling like I might almost 24/7. From 6 weeks until the day you were born at 41 weeks 2 days, I felt sick and that was rough. I didn’t have the normal pregnancy cravings and insatiable need for food, instead I had food and smell aversions and never wanted to eat but that’s not healthy when you’re growing a baby.I spent a good portion of your pregnancy on the couch just trying to make it through one more day, one day closer to meeting you. It was hard to equate these awful feelings with growing something so good inside me.
I had always wanted a surprise gender pregnancy and since we found out with your brother I knew this pregnancy I wanted to be surprised. Dad was not fond of the idea but he is also not good at keeping secrets so he reluctantly agreed and by the end he was on board with the surprise. Not knowing your gender was a very different experience during the pregnancy. I wasn’t attached to the idea of boy or girl and I didn’t even have a strong feeling either way. I think partially because I didn’t want to get attached to one idea or another and be disappointed. You were just baby, a seemingly third option of a gender-neutral baby. I only ventured guesses on your gender based on similarities and differences between Grayson’s pregnancy which pointed toward a girl. Not knowing your gender, I often felt detached from this pregnancy, more like it was happening to me than with me. But in the end I am so glad we waited those long 10 months to find out who you were.
Your pregnancy was a lesson in waiting, waiting to feel better, waiting to find out your gender and waiting for the status of your health. After our 21 week anatomy scan we received a call that you had an echogenic bowel, a bright spot on the ultrasound on the bowel where it shouldn’t be bright, and we were being referred to a high risk specialist. A long two week wait to see the specialist gave us no new information that Google hadn’t already given us. An echogenic bowel is in 1-2% of pregnancies and in majority of cases is a normal variant but it is also a soft marker for a list of conditions. Best case scenario (besides being a normal variant) is baby swallowed blood from an intra-amniotic hemorrhage but I had never had any spotting or bleeding so that was ruled out. An echogenic bowel is a soft marker for cystic fibrosis, chromosomal anomaly like down’s syndrome, obstructed or twisted bowel or a viral infection. Our doctor said it was a 50/50 chance of being nothing or being something, all pretty scary things to think about as a parent, especially not knowing what it could be, if anything. Everything else in the scan was normal but ultrasound can only see so much. Our options were further testing of my blood, which only gave percentage chances of some of these things and not conclusive diagnosis’, or an amniocentesis, a large needle collects amniotic fluid samples for testing. While amniocentesis can reveal a great deal, it still would not give us 100% certainty of your health and our doctor said there was a risk of 1 in 250 of miscarriage. Since we didn’t want to risk a miscarriage and the results weren’t going to change the outcome of the pregnancy we chose to not do any of the testing and instead monitor for the remainder of the pregnancy.
The following months were a transition of waiting for each new appointment and trying not to think about the what ifs. But that was difficult, especially for me. Every time you moved in my stomach it made me wonder, are you healthy? Are you moving because you’re healthy or because something is wrong? Every time you didn’t move for a period of time I thought is everything ok in there? Or are you not moving because you’re sleeping and not because something is wrong? I really tried my best to push it out of my mind and not dwell on it and some days I succeeded and others I did not. Sometimes I would catch myself staring out my office windows at the trees in the wind and the bugs and birds flying about and run through all the scenarios, the what ifs, the contingency plans. We couldn’t make any concrete plans for the months after your birth because what if you were too sick or in a hospital.
Each visit to the specialist was different. One visit you would be just fine and the next you didn’t grow how they wanted you to or you had a pronounced belly. Every visit would change the odds of one outcome to another outcome. Basically we had no idea what it could be for the majority of the pregnancy. I had this weird feeling that you would come early, like not healthy early (boy did you show me!), and every week I would be so excited we had made it one more week and at every appointment I would secretly be waiting for the talk of we need to deliver right now. I don’t know why I had this feeling, it wasn’t ever warranted, there were no signs of pre-term labor, I just had this fear and coupled with the unknown health I was worried. Finally at the check at 38 weeks the doctor felt optimistic you would be healthy and we didn’t need to come back for any more checks. And then it was waiting for those last few weeks to find out not only your gender but your health.
I felt emotionally heavy and drained throughout your pregnancy and I was sad that was how I felt. Everyone wants to have the joyful, glowing pregnancy free from worry and anxiety, but I didn’t and I really didn’t like that it was that way. I had periods of depression and anxiety, overwhelming sadness and hated that I wasn’t having a happy pregnancy. I felt so happy with the least amount of depression when I was pregnant with Grayson and I wanted that feeling again. I already suffer from depression and anxiety and doing so while pregnant with all the extra hormones made pregnancy seem even worse. It often felt like everything that could go wrong was. It was so emotionally hard to have a rough feeling pregnancy and potential health concerns on top of depression and anxiety and it often felt like your birth couldn’t come soon enough.
Your entrance into this world was so fast and inconceivable, I din’t even have time to worry about or process your gender, at first, and your health. I was so shocked and stunned after your birth, by how you and I brought you into this world, that I wasn’t worried about what health issues you may have, I was consumed with your face and the fact that you were actually in my arms. Everything just washed away when I held you in my arms, all the detachment, the pain of not feeling well, the worry, everything. It didn’t matter anymore because you were here, right where you were meant to be. You were given a clean bill of health and all that burden was lifted. There is a very small possibility of a rare viral infection that may not show up until later but we will keep an eye on your development and milestones and hope for the best outcome.
The memory and pain, emotionally and physically, from your pregnancy has already begun to fade and every time I look at your face I’m not reminded of how sick I was or the gut wrenching worry, I’m reminded of how strong you are, how resilient you are, how brave you are. I think about your incredible birth and how your entrance captures so much of who you are and I can only imagine who you will become.
In the end it doesn’t matter what we went through in order to meet you, it matters that you are here, where you are meant to be. I love you Emory Willow, always and forever!
Engagement | Love Story | Charlottesville, Virginia
When a new inquiry hits my inbox I always get butterflies as I open it, excited to see what the couple has in mind for their wedding. As soon as I read Hannah and Alex’s inquiry I knew this wedding was going to be one for the books! Virginia vineyard wedding. How can you not love those three words?! Hannah described her wedding style as classic trendy, which I absolutely love, taking classic elements and updating them for modern times. Not only is Hannah’s style impeccable, but her color palette might just be one of my all time favorites! For their vineyard wedding they chose shades of dusty and smoky blues paired with white and color. Classic yet trendy!
I absolutely adore getting to know my clients and cultivating a relationship with them. Being a hopeless romantic I’m a sucker for a good love story and I just love Hannah and Alex’s story! I mean just look at they way they look at each other! Swoon!!
Here is their love story from Hannah |
How did the two of you meet?
Alex and I both went to VCU for undergrad. I was a junior and he was a sophomore. We first were introduced while on a road trip to watch the VCU Men’s Basketball team play in the Final Four Tournament in Houston, Texas in the spring of 2011. A group of my sorority sisters and a group of his fraternity brothers followed each other in cars all the way to Houston..a 24-hour car ride. He was the only guy we didn’t know in the group. Alex and I didn’t talk much on the trip but once we got back to Richmond, we kept bumping into each other on campus. Finally, he asked me out on a date. He picked me up and we both ended up wearing red. The rest was history!
Tell me more about your love story!
Alex and I have been dating since 2011. However, in 2013, we had to do long distance for 2 years. He lived in Richmond, Virginia and I lived in Birmingham, Alabama so I could complete my Masters degree. Since I knew I was only going to be in Alabama for 2 years, we felt like it wasn’t worth him leaving his job temporarily, when we knew I’d have to move again to complete my residency. Those 2 years were some of the most challenging but rewarding times for us. We learned so much about ourselves and how strong our relationship really was. During that time, we learned we can get through anything and that being long distance was worth not being with each other at all.
Tell me about the proposal!
Alex proposed on Saturday, September 23rd at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. That morning he surprised me with 2 dozen roses from my favorite florist after getting home from workout class. Then we went out to our favorite breakfast place called Alon’s Bakery just down the road from our apartment. We decided that afternoon to go to the Botanical Gardens since we had recently gotten a annual membership and we hadn’t gone since we had purchased it. Living in the south, it was still very hot out. We walked the gardens for about an hour. I started to get a little impatient due to the heat (I feel bad now). Finally, he found a quiet spot under this beautiful gazebo. He sat me down and began to tell me why he loved me and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. After giving his “sales pitch”, he got down on one knee and proposed. After the proposal, we walked around the gardens a little more to soak in the moment just the two of us. We took a few selfies and then headed home. We immediately started calling our parents and close friends. After building up an appetite, he surprised me with dinner at Canoe, a restaurant on the Chattahoochee River. The meal was amazing. We finished dinner with drinks out by the river. To top the night off, he had our two really close couple friends meet us at a wine bar for champagne and late night snacks! That day was the perfect amount of alone time and celebration with close friends.
What’s your favorite thing about each other?
That we are best friends and can make each other laugh like no one else can.
I cannot wait for this beautiful couple to finally become husband and wife next Saturday! I was really in love with their proposal and inspired by the Botanical Gardens for their wedding stationery, so keep an eye out for pictures of all their custom wedding stationery. It has been so hard not to share all the beautiful details of their wedding paper but I promise it will be worth the wait!
Here’s to a beautiful wedding for Hannah + Alex, surrounded by their friends and family and a start to an even more beautiful marriage!
Bespoke Wedding Invitation | Calligraphy | Warrenton, Virginia
When Terry Kaye of Terry Kaye Events reached out about a vintage 1940’s styled wedding inspiration shoot at a historic home turned B&B in downtown Warrenton, Virginia I was intrigued, especially because of the history of this property. The home has a long history and was once the Hearst house where Randolph Hearst’s grandson and his beautiful bride hosted their reception which was said to be “the wedding of the year”. I mean for someone who is all about storytelling through my designs this was an opportunity to create a beautiful wedding invitation suite that shared a snippet of this gorgeous home’s history as well as contributing to another chapter in this house’s story book.
The inspiration for this styled shoot stemmed from design aesthetics for a glam, elegant and timeless feel with a french twist which paired beautifully with the color palette of pale blue, gold, ivory and nude blush. I designed this wedding stationery suite around classic and elegant calligraphy styles that are timeless in and of themselves. I was inspired by the ornate filigree often found in vintage architecture and home decor design and wanted to incorporate some of those ornate and dainty details within the suite design. I wasn’t exactly sure how I wanted to incorporate that so I turned to Pinterest and started researching historic homes and vintage decor. I fell in love with frame and mirror details and immediately knew that would be the perfect vehicle for an ornate filagree and I just love how the hand illustrated frame turned out! Since I wanted to to add a modern twist to these wedding invitations I decided instead of a traditional white, the invites would be the most gorgeous shade of pale blue and that pop of color was just what this suite needed! Pairing this wedding invitation with classic gold calligraphy was a no brainer!
I had the opportunity to actually see the Chilton House on the day of the styled shoot and my oh my is it ever gorgeous! I was blown away by it’s stately front and every room was just as breathtaking as the last! The tablescape from this styled shoot is still one of my all time top favorite tables! I am obsessed with the dusty blue candles in antique gold candlestick holders especially when paired with the greenery garland running down the length of the table, the layered gold chargers and place settings and the pale blue menus I designed perfectly placed at each seat.
This vintage wedding styled shoot is tells a beautiful story at an even more beautiful historic home and is one to see! You can check out more of this styled shoot which was also featured over on Artfully Wed!
