{The wedding of Elizabeth & Felicia // Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay, California // Circolo 2 letterpress wedding invitation design in champagne and pewter}

Our client coordinator Andrea had the great pleasure of working with Elizabeth (Eaz) to help choose the perfect wedding invitation for her ultra luxurious event. At first, Eaz was a bit skeptical about working with us exclusively by email and phone, but we are so happy that they did! Upon receiving their letterpress samples, Eaz and Felicia opted for the fun Circolo 2 design printed in champagne and pewter. The invitations coordinated perfectly with the charger plates they used and helped influence incredibly beautiful and personal details throughout their wedding. The couple infused their day with meaningful details that make it one of our favorite Bella Figura weddings to date.

Eaz and Felicia incorporated so many lovely details. Among their favorites were the rocks they used as place cards that were hand-painted by Felicia’s best man. They provided pretty custom embroidered handkerchiefs for all the happy tears and opted for flamenco guitar music in lieu of traditional wedding music during their ceremony. They had matching custom Converse All Star sneakers to wear after the ceremony and had a fabulously fun videobooth at their reception so guests could leave them personal video messages. The pastry chef for their wedding handmade beautiful lighted star ice bowls to serve their sorbet intermezzo and, our personal favorite, the matching chargers and invitations!

(more…)

Snippet & Ink, one of our favorite wedding blogs, comes up with some of the most creative wedding inspiration out there. Kathryn’s color combinations are just to die for, and will inspire your wedding, your home, your sense of style, and your life. So we were thrilled when Snippet & Ink created this inspiration board below that features our Festoon letterpress wedding invitation. Visit Snippet & Ink to win a $350 gift certificate to Bella Figura (contest goes until Friday, January 30). You can also check out Snippet & Ink’s favorite Bella Figura designs here. Enjoy!

The first issue of Southern Weddings just hit the news stands and, wow, is it a gorgeous magazine. We were so excited that our recipe letterpress coasters are featured as one of Southern Weddings fabulous finds (“must have’s for your big day and the happily ever after”). Southern Weddings writes, “These beautiful letterpressed coasters would surely be the talk of your cocktail hour with fun drink recipes included on each beautiful piece.” You can make these coasters double-sided by including the bride’s & groom’s names and the date on the reverse side. What a cool keepsake…

Here are a few other photographs of our favorite letterpress coasters. Have fun dreaming!

Every day our Bella Figura clients are inspirations to us. They have good tastes in invitations, of course, but they also have amazing talents at planning fabulous weddings. So with our new web site, we wanted to start profiling some of the best weddings of our clients. We’re just thrilled that our first Bella Figura real wedding is this lovely couple, Allan & Brian, with a really spectacular wedding. When we saw photographs from their celebration at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, all of us here were just floored by the creativity of everything about the wedding. Allan & Brian choose the Circolo 2 design in cardinal and pewter, and their invitation really captured the spirit of their wedding. And then Allan sent us some amazing writing about the wedding too, the importance of the ceremony, and his thoughts about love that described, for us, what weddings are really about.

What was your inspiration for the wedding?
The arts are very important to us, which is one important reason why we chose Disney Concert Hall as the venue. We also both have an affinity for the music and styles of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. We wanted an event that was stylish and elegant but also fun. We opted for a black tie-optional champagne cocktail event. We love art deco style, so we wanted something inspired by that sensibility. But because the concert hall is so modern, we didn’t want a slavish re-creation of art deco. Instead, we wanted a fusion which was a challenge to pull off, but ended up working really well.

Tell us about the proposal.
It would be great if there were a story with lightning bolts or roses or bended knee in the moonlight. However, after 18 years together there was no such moment. Actually, we were quite surprised when the California Supreme Court handed down a decision allowing same-sex marriage in the state. Beginning that evening, friends and family started calling to ask, “So, are you going to do it?” We were both surprised to discover that we had repressed how much we wanted to get married — how important it was to have an event that included the people who mattered most to us. And so after a few days of weighing the options (such as a small ceremony at the county clerk office) we decided we wanted a real wedding. And, with Proposition 8 on the November ballot, we felt we had a brief window in which we could confidently plan something.

(more…)

We love traditional rectangular letterpress invitations, of course, but we’re predicting a twist on the traditional: square and horizontal wedding invitations. Both sizes feel very fresh and stylish to us right now.

square designs pictured below, starting in the upper right, going clockwise // Festoon // Amici // Ella // Irving

horizontal designs pictured below, starting in the upper right, going clockwise // Silhouette // Mimosa // Ericka // Onalisse

What’s going to be hot in the letterpress wedding invitation world for 2009? Well, we looked into our crystal letterpresses and our first prediction is…

Edge painting. What is it? Originally reserved for the finest hand-bound books, edge painting has a rich history in the letterpress world. For centuries, master book binders would gild the edges of books with gold–or paint an actual illustration on the edge of the book’s pages–to show just how precious a particular book was. We’ve put a modern spin on this practice by hand painting the edge of our invitations with our Bella inks. You’ll see the color on the outside edge of the piece, but not on the front or back of the paper. Because the cotton paper we print on is so thick, edge painting can be a great way to highlight a color in your invitation set,or add an entirely new ink. (read more about edge painting wedding invitations here)

designs pictured below, starting in the upper right, going clockwise // Avant with cardinal edging // Festoon with pool edging // Urbanity with silver edging // Irving with fuchsia edging // New Calligraphy with cardinal edging // Birds with navy edging