Dramatic Wedding Invitations

Attention offbeat brides: it’s freaking HARD to find invites that are not overdone and boring. At least it was for me.

Our wedding is going to be dark and dramatic, and there was not much to turn to as far as invitation inspiration goes. I am so lucky that Jeff has amazing graphic design skills, and that my dad owns a printing business.

But then they had to deal with me. The pickiest client ever. Yes, those are words straight from my dad’s mouth.

I LOVE how our invitation suite turned out. I wanted them to be modern, glam, and dramatic. The entire suite was designed by myself and Jeff, but I wanted to share some tips and steps that could be useful whether you’re designing your own invitation suite, or picking them out to be customized for you.

Step 1: Choose your color theme

One of our colors is black, and since I wanted some drama, we went with black for the main invitation and for the information card. The black paper is letter-pressed with gold foil, and I love the contrast!

Step 2: Pick your style

Picking out what style you want for your suite will help set the tone of your wedding once you have your color(s) picked. Going with a modern and dramatic theme, we picked out three fonts that reflect modern and dramatic: a sans serif font and two scripty fonts. If you’re designing your own invitations, I highly recommend using 2-3 fonts to make your suite more “design-y”.

Step 3: Include all information needed & package your suite

The information that should be included on your invitation should include:

WHO: You’ll obviously want to include your names, but also perhaps your hosts, such as your parents.

WHAT: A wedding of course! State a line inviting guests to a wedding, or get creative with different wording.

WHEN: A formal invitation would have the full date and time spelled out, but this is your preference. As long as you have the month, day, year and ceremony start time.

WHERE: Your venue location would be listed here, but not necessarily the full address on a modern invitation. But do list the city and state underneath.

OPTIONAL: Add a quick note about reception to follow and/or make a note about attire on the very bottom, if you want to communicate this information.

The information card includes an invite to our welcome party and our wedding website details, along with our wedding hashtag. And then there’s the map. A map is definitely not necessary, however, since our wedding is a destination wedding, we thought it would be helpful for our guests.

Packaging: I have always loved the look of vellum (transluscent paper), and knew I wanted it included with the suite. I had researched so many different ways to tie all of the paperwork together neatly, I really love the look of a simple tri-fold envelopment. The vellum outer layer gives a little sneak peek at what’s inside, sealed with a bronze wax seal.

P.S. If you want to see how we did the wax seals, watch my Instastories under my “wedding” stories on Instagram.

Hope you found this helpful!

xo, Lynn