We had the pleasure of chatting with Nika Smernoff at Calligraphette & Co. in Washington, DC. Nika is a calligrapher and designer with a decade of experience in the industry. Below, Nika explains how she got her start, what keeps her going, her favorite trends, and more!
Q: Tell us about yourself and how your studio came to be? What was your inspiration?
During my first semester of graduate school in 2015, studying the relationship between pandemics and national security of all things, I found calligraphy and quickly fell in love with spending meditative evenings practicing my letters. In 2016, I started a business doing envelope calligraphy to help pay my way through school. When I received my degree in 2018, I figured I could either wonder where Calligraphette & Co. could’ve gone or jump into working for myself full-time. I had fallen in love with the wedding industry and loved the thrill of being able to see someone else’s vision and help translate it into something beautiful and tactile.
Q: What are some of the most rewarding aspects of your job?
Weddings are just such a happy time in people’s lives. My clients are figuring out how to express their love for each other and their personality as a couple for a once-in-a-lifetime celebration. In particular, I get to make people realize they’re creative, help them make something that they didn’t realize was possible, and hopefully ease a little of the stress that other parts of wedding planning can create.
Q: What are your hopes for the future of your business?
My end goal is for my clients to have an invitation tucked away somewhere in a keepsake box, to find with their children one day, and be transported 25 years back in time to when they were engaged. Whether that means curating and personalizing a Bella Figura design or creating something from scratch, I want to create heirloom pieces for people to enjoy. Not everyone wants to take on the work it takes to create custom designs, even if they have the taste for it. If I can continue to help couples send out invitations that rise to the occasion of their wedding, I’ll always consider that a success.
Q: Do you have any current trends you’re loving?
I’m loving the trend of non-rectangular inserts! Whether it’s a circle or a custom die-cut, playing with shapes is such a fun way to bring life into an invitation suite. Velvet is a trend I’m excited to try, especially with letterpress and foil printing. Although this isn’t a new trend, I’m always a fan of putting pets on wax seals! It’s a great way to give a nod to an important family member without necessarily making them the focus of the invitation suite. Lastly, I’d say custom match boxes because they’re so unexpected and also so much fun to have after the wedding!
Q: What do you think your clients enjoy most about working with you to create their event stationery?
One theme that I’ve noticed in reviews is that I always go the extra mile and put myself fully into the design process with each client, making it easy for the client and bringing their vision to life. Almost all of my clients apologize early in the process for being picky and too detail-oriented, and I always tell them that the best clients are the ones who care about the small details. I’m always happy to refine font choices and make adjustments to colors in order to have a design reflect exactly what you see in your head, even if it’s hard to describe.
Clients usually say that I was their most responsive vendor, combining warmth and professionalism to make their decisions as easy as possible. I’m also notorious for becoming good friends with my local clients, so chances are, if you’re located in DC, we’ll be grabbing a glass of prosecco after your wedding to catch up!
Q: Anything else we should know or that you would like to share?
There can be a lot of focus on how to make your wedding about other people. Don’t get me wrong. Of course, you want your guests to have a wonderful time, for your friends and family to mingle and create memories, and for the day to run smoothly. Invitations are perhaps the one aspect of your wedding where you don’t really have to consider anyone else and do just what you want. This doesn’t have to mean spending months crafting something from scratch, but getting to play with paper and colors and discuss what designs you and your fiance like is such a joyful part of the planning process. A good stationer will make it feel like fun, with minimal to no homework for you to do, providing a glimmer of ease in an otherwise email and logistics-heavy process.
We were excited to spot Sara and Ryan’s wedding featured in the Weddings section within the Washingtonian! The couple married at the Dumbarton House in Georgetown. We printed their letterpress invitations in Navy and Gold Matte foil as an accent color. The belly-band, envelope liner, and details card insert all printed on Light Gray paper added another color to this set without having to add another ink. This subtle color palette mimicked the sweet setting of their wedding with pops of blue throughout. Be sure to head on over to Washingtonian to see even more pictures from their big day!
We were thrilled to have had the opportunity to create Michelle and Neema’s maple foil invitations thanks to the help of our friends at the Dandelion Patch. We were even more excited to see their wedding come to life through the eyes of their photographer Katie Stoops. The couple was married at Union Market’s Dock 5 which they transformed into a space filled with gorgeous greenery, Persian rugs, and all their loved ones surrounding them. Michelle and Neema wanted their special day to be reminiscent of a dinner party on a much grander scale so they created a warm, intimate overall environment for their guests to experience. Their invitations reflected the color palette of their day with burgundies and blushes represented in the florals on the envelope liner and invitation backer. After attending 21 weddings with Neema by her side, we’ll let Michelle share more about the most special wedding of them all, her own:
What was the inspiration for the wedding?
We host dinner parties for friends at our home in DC all the time, and our goal was to create an (obviously much more elaborate) version of that. We wanted it to feel warm and personal, centered around delicious food paired with good wine and conversation. For example, we picked menu items that we like to cook at home (crab and avocado salad; duck breast with port wine sauce; vegetable wellington); we created versions of the dishes at home and tasted various wines alongside them to choose pairings for dinner; and we used our guests’ nicknames on the menus to serve as place cards. Hosting the wedding at Union Market, DC’s favorite food market was the perfect anchor for it all.
What surprised you the most and what was your favorite moment?
My answer to these two questions is the same – the ceremony! I was mostly looking forward to the dinner and dancing part of the evening and didn’t really expect how meaningful the ceremony would feel. Our officiant (a good friend) wrote a beautiful tribute to our relationship filled with insights from our family and friends; our mothers and my sister participated in a traditional Persian sugar ceremony (happily married female relatives grind sugar cubes over the couple to ‘sweeten’ the marriage) to honor Neema’s heritage; and instead of feeling self-conscious and overwhelmed as I expected, I felt so in tune and in love with Neema as we said our vows. The dinner and dancing parts of the evening were obviously amazing too, but I have to say the ceremony was my favorite part!
Advice to future couple’s planning their own wedding?
It’s easy to say “try to relax and have fun with it!” but the reality is, there will always be moments of stress, conflict, and indecision. Our best concrete advice is to sit down at the very beginning with your partner and make a list of which wedding elements are most important to each of you, and which elements you care less about. That way, down the road when it’s time to make decisions, compromise will be easier because you’ll have established priorities from the start. For example, I wanted a band but Neema felt very strongly from the beginning about having a DJ, so I compromised on that; I felt strongly about having a small bridal party (only our siblings) so Neema gave his group of five best friends the role of ushers.
How did you choose your invitation design and ink colors?
I was initially hesitant about sending paper invitations for environmental reasons, but after some urging from my more traditional mother, I did some research on printing options and learned about Bella Figura’s green printing commitments, which made me feel much better about the whole process. We visited The Dandelion Patch in Virginia who helped us create a gorgeous fall floral suite, again finding a compromise – I adore big splashy florals, but Neema preferred something more streamlined, so we designed a simple maple shine foil invitation card with Bella Figura’s amazing floral print on the back and on the envelope liner. The beautiful purples, burgundies, and blushes of this print matched perfectly with our décor colors. The wording on the invitation was very important to me as well – we avoided the standard language and crafted a message carefully to reflect the kind of evening we were planning and how much we appreciate our guests.
What’s next for the happy couple?
After our wedding, we took a couple months to enjoy some downtime before traveling to Sri Lanka and the Maldives for our honeymoon over the holidays. We can’t recommend this break between wedding and honeymoon enough – the comedown after a wedding is very real, and the delayed honeymoon gave us something additional to look forward to while allowing us to rest and recuperate in between.
With the help of our friends at The Dandelion Patch, Courtney and Garet used a pastel palette to personalize our Maeve design for their New Orleans wedding. They added a blind debossed border to the invitation and a coordinating envelope liner to tie in the rose quartz letterpress ink used to highlight their names.
letterpress inks: charcoal + rose quartz + blind deboss (no ink) | fonts: didot + sans capitals + riviera | paper: bella smooth cotton white 1-ply | foil edging: gold matte | envelope: bella cotton white | liner: classic color pattern in rose quartz | The Dandelion Patch | customization #37163
With the help of our friends at the Dandelion Patch, Patty and Roman customized our Elodie design for their duel ceremony wedding celebration. They chose a palette of yolk and pewter letterpress inks for their save the date, invitation and reply card and coordinated their envelope liner for another punch of color. These simple typography wedding invitations gave them plenty of room to add both ceremony dates and venues and allowed for a sweet personalization – the couple’s letterpressed fingerprints in the shape of a heart.
The Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Florida was the backdrop for Kathryn and Murat’s beach side October wedding. They chose our Joie de Vivre design and customized with bold fonts, a dramatic color palette and a foil stamped pocketfold that boasted their duogram and wedding date. Thanks to our friends at The Dandelion Patch for working with us on these stunning blue and gold wedding invitations.
Gretchen and George sent these custom Fanfare letterpress wedding announcements, personalizing with the state flags of Virginia and Texas. They included a moving card that paid homage to their new home in Texas and added a striped liner to accent the set.
letterpress inks: prussian blue + wine | digital printing: cmyk | fonts: pike + carly + irene | paper: bella smooth cotton white 1-ply | edge painting: wine | envelope: bella cotton white | envelope liner: dune pattern in prussian blue | The Dandelion Patch | customization #29485
Jessica and John created these custom rose gold wedding invitations with fonts and motifs from our library. They personalized their design by adding a custom duogram and a vintage map envelope liner.
letterpress ink: charcoal | foil stamping: rose gold shine | fonts: engravers + botany + aiden + impression + keeva | paper: bella cotton white 2-ply + 1-ply | envelope: bella cotton white | envelope liner: vintage washington d.c. pattern in charcoal | The Dandelion Patch | customization #26371
