Expert Advice: Anna Bond of Rifle Paper Co.

Posted by Britni Wood, Associate Style Editor

from top: logo for Anna's store, custom invitation suite, Anna and her darling husband on their wedding day 

I'm thrilled to introduce Anna Bond from Rifle Design and new store Rifle Paper Co. as our Style Expert this week. Anna's work has graced the pages of Martha Stewart Weddings and can be seen in our Fall issue on newsstands now. I dare you to look at her gorgeous style without a smile on your face. She has the most whimsical and lighthearted approach to wedding invitations, so I thought, what better than to get to know what inspires her than to interview her right here on the Bride's Guide.

Britni Wood: Where did you get your start as an invitation designer?

Anna Bond: I studied graphic design in college and worked as both an art director and freelance designer/illustrator before I began designing stationery. After designing wedding invitation sets for a couple of close friends, I quickly began to realize how much I loved it and decided to focus on it as my business.

BW: What are the artistic influences and inspirations that have informed your design aesthetic?

AB: It seems like there are too many to list! I love sifting through all sorts of things to find inspiration such as mid century design & architecture, vintage children's books, South American folk art, and so on. I love illustrations by Marc Boutavant, Matte Stephens, and Mary Blair, all of which have a very nostalgic quality to them.

BW: I know you were married recently—congratulations! Has going through the process of planning your own wedding changed how you work with your brides? What words of advice would you give to brides about designing a custom stationery suite for their own weddings?

AB: I actually hadn't done too many stationery sets before I got married, but I'm glad that I got to experience being a bride before working with so many. I feel I can relate to the wedding process better and not only understand the importance of the day but the stresses that a bride can feel. 

My advice to brides who want custom suites is to not be shy about sharing their photos, personal stories, likes and dislikes. This is one of the most important steps in the design process, and communicating what you want in the beginning helps the designer and bride be on the same page throughout the project. I love hearing as much as I can about each couple. Not only is it fun to hear, but I want to find out enough to be inspired by each couple so I create something uniquely "them."

BW: Can you share with us some of the crazy requests you’ve received the last few years?

AB: I wish I had a crazy story, but I've been very fortunate to have worked with wonderful brides who are are incredibly easy to work with. The craziest deadline I've had was probably my own wedding with its 4-month-long engagement. 

BW: Tell us about your new great store!

AB: I'm so excited about it! It's been a long time coming and has been put on hold throughout the year while I've focused on my custom invitations. I'm set to launch next week on Monday the 23rd. The store will feature personalized wedding invitation templates, stationery, miscellaneous paper goods, art prints, and children's paper goods. I'll be adding more products throughout the year, but the main focus of the shop is the line of invitation templates. The designs are all illustrated and will feature lots of customizable options at a more affordable rate than my custom work—perfect for brides on a budget!

Event Planning: Vegetable Details

Posted by Matthew Robbins, Contributor

Table numbers and menu cards are often an afterthought, but they can really bring a magical and finishing touch to your table design. Take this fabulous wedding, for example.

It was held at Blue Hill Stone Barns, one of my absolute favorite venues and restaurants in New York. The bride worked with Ceci NY to design these wonderful menus and table cards. We all wanted to avoid the typical table number—for creative reasons but also to save space on the table—and the bride is a bit of a foodie, so the final and perfect idea was to use garden vegetables to "name" each table. Ceci printed different garden vegetables on a simple band meant to wrap around a menu set at each place setting, so if you were seated at the Butternut Squash table, you could very easily walk around the dining room and find ten of these bright vegetables marking your table.

It was also just so much more fun and perfect for the venue. Blue Hill is famous for serving the most exquisite and delicious food straight from their own garden, so the vegetable theme was very appropriate. If you want to try this on your own, click here to download a menu card template online from Martha Stewart Weddings. This is one more great link for table number ideas.

What are your ideas for finding original table number and menu card presentation ideas?

 

Each table was uniquely vintage-inspired. We used zinc tabletops, and copper and wood accents. I love the contrast of each table surface with the different menus and place settings.

DIY Craft: Thank You Notes

Posted by Katie Hatch, Style Director

My former co-crafter Laura Normandin (whose wedding was in our pages this past Summer) made these great thank you notes using simple bird clip art. If you look closely, you can see that she affixed a little note saying "thank you" in the bird's beak! Pretty darling if you ask me. I'm sure your wedding guests would love to receive something so thoughtful and heartfelt as this thank you note. The clip art comes from Dover books and the instructions are here:

How are you doing anything handmade for your thank you notes? Do you have a system for them? And is your husband helping you?

Our Bridal Market Party

Posted by Darcy Miller, Editorial Director

Tonight is MSW's 15th anniversary party at the Grand Ballroom in New York City's Plaza hotel (I'll be live tweeting all the highlights beginning at 6:00 pm). We're so excited we don't know what to do with ourselves until then, but one thing's for sure: a lot of planning went into making today possible, beginning with the invitation.

We wanted something elegant to match the grandeur of the location, so we chose a bold gold beveled edge on an oversized card from the Martha Stewart Stationery for Crane & Co collection. And, of course, it had to be personal, so we made sure to include our 15th anniversary logo up at the top. What do you think?

Grace Bonney's Stationery

Posted by Shira Savada, Real Weddings Editor

Welcome to the first post of many in our behind-the-scenes series about Grace & Aaron's wedding. Why not start with the first thing guests see: the stationery.

Photo by Tara Donne.

Grace: When I thought about invitations, I assumed I would be doing them myself. Then reality set in and I realized how much work would be involved—I knew I wouldn't have time to produce them the way I wanted on top of a full-time job and side projects. I happened to meet Erin and Nicole at the Renegade Craft Fair last summer and it was kismet. They were showing these great message hankies and had a few mocked up as wedding invites. It was as if they had read my mind. I knew right away that this idea would be perfect for the invites, and—shocker—Aaron loved them too! I’m so used to having different likes and dislikes from him that it was really special to have him be just as psyched about the invites as I was. They turned out so well it was hard to give them away. I loved the idea that everyone got their own individual invite, and we had so much fun over Thanksgiving picking out hankies to match each guest.

Erin & Nicole of Bird & Banner: We are long time fans of Design*Sponge and were thrilled when Grace approached us about designing her wedding invitations. We loved the inspiration she gathered which included kraft paper, calligraphy, vintage details, and the beautiful location in Savannah, Georgia. Grace was particularly sensitive to her fiancée Aaron's preferences and wanted the invites to feel more southern gentleman than southern belle.

Thank you!

Posted by Katie Hatch, Style Director

Last year we did a story on photo crafts for the wedding, and my favorite idea came from a photo from my friends' wedding. They were leaving their reception in a convertible, with the usual "Just Married" sign; we took that photo and replaced "Just Married" with "Thank You," which is something you could do yourself using a photo editing program. Or, if you want to avoid that challenge, you can prepare a separate sign for this moment, then have your photographer shoot you both ways. You could even print the card yourself on a good photo printer, like the Epson here, which I use. I think it makes a darling thank you note, and a fun memento for your guests. 

 

Aren't they cute? 

Sugar Paper

Posted by Darcy Miller, Editorial Director

I had always heard great things about LA-based stationers Chelsea Shukov and Jamie Grobecker of Sugar Paper, but this week I was lucky enough to visit with them in NYC and go through all their beautiful books of stationery. I was so impressed! It's clear that they believe that quality really matters—no wonder they're LA's most coveted stationer. Their fresh, custom design, loved by the likes of Katie Holmes, Reese Witherspoon and Gwyneth Paltrow, utilize colored edges, double-thick paper, bright colors, beveling, and bordering. I especially love their beautiful letterpress stationery, which is perfect for both wedding invitations and personal stationery. If you're in LA, pay them a visit—or just check them out here.

Printed by Minted

Posted by Shira Savada, Real Weddings Editor:

I know a lot of you are super DIY types, and some of you aspire to be. But be honest—sometimes some of us don’t have the time or resources to customize every single element of our wedding ourselves.

No worries dear readers. Just hop over to minted. This online stationery boutique offers tons of design options—most of which can be further customized. Plus, there are three perfectly thick paper options: their signature white, their premium recycled paper, and a subtly shimmering pearlescent option.

Designers from all over the world are basically at your beck and call. Choose your favorite design (good luck—it took me forever to choose one to show in this post) and start making it your own. Insert your text, maybe change a color, or add a photo, and you’re nearly there. Within a day, you’ll get a proof. Once you give the OK all that's left is for them to appear in your mailbox.

Here's a save the date option called "intricate" by designer Andrea Snaza. It comes in two color choices (poppy and stone and lavender and stone).

 

I asked that she change the colors to poppy and a vibrant navy and tweak the text a bit (my Jack and Jill line is slightly bigger, and I skipped the script font for the month). I had my final design's proof sent back pretty quick—voila!

A Very Fond Farewell

Posted by Marisa Sellitti, Stationery Expert

Over the past few years at Martha Stewart Weddings, I have had the pleasure and privilege of working with such amazing talent: my colleagues and friends, photographers, contributors, and stationers just to name a few. It has been a truly rewarding experience,one that I will always cherish. Thank you all again and again, and thank you, readers, for being as loyal as you are!

During the past five months, I have been thrilled to share with you all the things and places I love and am inspired by when it comes to paper and such. On that note, I am sad to say this will be my final blog post on the Bride's Guide. As I bid you a final farewell, I will leave you with this. Calligraphy and Cakes, one of my all time favorite and most memorable stories I worked on here at Weddings. It was one of those amazing stories that combined all my loves: the classic art of calligraphy, confections, and paper. What could be sweeter that this. I feel so lucky to have worked with such a talented group on this story: Wendy Kromer, John DeCollibus, Michael Sull, Denise Sharp, Gail Brill, Anita Calero, and of course my former colleagues.

 

And what lies ahead? I am going to venture out into the freelance world which will afford more time with my son, who is such an amazing little person and who inspires me every day!

What inspires you every day? And how are you translating that to your wedding?

Another Blockbuster!

Posted by Shira Savada, Real Weddings Editor

We're on a bit of a video kick lately. Yesterday we watched the hysterical dance down the aisle. And today I spotted this adorable little save the date movie in a post over on poppytalk handmade's blog.

Who knows what video we'll discover next...