Behind the scenes with our 2018 wedding collection

Paperless Post BlogWedding > Behind the scenes with our 2018 wedding collection

We’d make a bad spouse—every year, we just find new things to love. That’s the great part of designing wedding invitations for our soon-to-be-weds: discovering what’s inspiring our users and marrying those bright ideas to beautiful, traditional wedding finery. Take a look at what’s on the minds and moodboards of our designers as we march into another wedding season.

 

“Herrgarde” by Paperless Post. Image: New York Public Library.

Eating our greens, and exploring wedding greenery

 

All the focus is usually on the flowers, but more and more, we’ve become entranced with using natural greenery in arrangements. So much so, that we wanted to explore some wild and woody ideas. It seemed like a natural extension from some of our other rustic wedding suites—where we’d explored woodgrains and other country life motifs, we wanted to create something like a bouquet that matched those natural scenes. The result? Garlands made from fern, eucalyptus, and other leaves that take on near-sculptural forms.

 

Photo: Villa Empain. “Ruhlmann” by Paperless Post.

Art Deco, revisited

 

Speaking of gold: when we were looking for new ways to think about using metallics, we were inspired by New York’s rich architectural history of beautiful Art Deco—whole buildings as well as lobbies, individual rooms, and ornamentation inspired by the period. The pleasing, symmetrical geometry still has a real shock of the new, but what really struck us was how well it used negative space. In other words: Art Deco is a great way to use a little gold to get a lot of effect.

 

“Niwas” by Paperless Post. Image: Carma.

 

Traditions worth keeping and the modern Indian wedding

 

The traditional artistry of Indian weddings and Indian art almost needed no addition from us. Vibrant colors, intricate gold inlay and carving, and masterful prints—it’s an instant celebration. We looked for what’s “modern” in the traditional: the ornate prints of a bridal sari, the magic of architectural ornament, and the wow and wonder of natural pigments.

 

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Van Vilet” by Paperless Post.

 

Flemish florals, still-life bouquets, and other Dutch treats

 

Weddings are the best excuse to go wild with flowers. (As though we needed one.) This year, we saw that the world was looking to explore and explode the mannered world of Dutch still-lifes for floral inspiration. We think it’s a way to convey lushness and richness while still keeping a bit of drama and paradoxicality around the edges—light and dark, live and preserved, romantic and refined.

 

“Copsewood” by Paperless Post. Image: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Gilding more than just the lily

 

It just wouldn’t be a wedding without a little gold. During one of our studio exploration days, our designers experimented with gilding greens in gold paint. Initially, we were inspired by ancient Greek hammered jewelry, but as we continued with our experiment, we started noticing other visual echoes. Some greens started looking like golden laurel crowns, some looked like the foil inlay on classic clothbound books, and some just looked like a beautiful midway point between nature’s smart instincts and a designer’s eye for artifice. Hopefully that’s what you find in some of our gold and green designs.

 

Image: Pinterest. “Sundance” by Paperless Post.

 

Telling your wedding story with invitations

 

Weddings, increasingly, are the biggest party you’ll throw in a lifetime. So why not embrace the day with a bit of whimsy? We wanted to create a few invitations that celebrate our users’ fun (and often themed) weddings. Faux boarding passes, old-fashioned theatre tickets, postcards from the wedding’s big destination served as the perfect inspiration—both for their sense of humor, and their note-perfect mid-century type design.

 

“Cennini” by Paperless Post. Image: Jennifer Douglas.

 

Perfectly imperfect wabi-sabi weddings

 

You’ll find several of our designs try to replicate the beautifully unfinished edges of artisanal and hand-cut deckled paper. Others instead use hand-painted illustrations with unblended, visibly human brushstrokes. That’s no replication: we did, in fact, hand paint it! That’s something we’ve tried to preserve in all of our designs (not just wedding stationery, either)—a sense of the handmade, the maker’s mark that reminds our users that their invitations were made by a real designer, with their event in mind.

 

You went behind the scenes, now see the finished product—browse our newest wedding collection.