The manor house wedding theme: how to match it with high-class wedding stationery

Country houses and manor houses have become increasingly popular wedding venues since marriage laws were relaxed in 1994. We’ve spoken to recently married Laura Carney-Cox about making her invitations fit for such grand surroundings: 

Wedding planning. The bane of my life. Yes, it may sound odd that a former bride to be would express this opinion but after organising absolutely every miniscule moment of my wedding day, I can’t say that I would want to relive the planning stage again! However, one element of the experience that was enjoyable was creating our wedding invites.

Now, not the most exciting part of the wedding process I hear you cry – not when you can spend hours trying on a cacophony of white and ivory lace creations , sampling a plethora of cakes and quaffing various wines – but actually rather an interesting process when you think of the significance of it.

The wedding invitation sets the tone for your wedding. It represents your theme and indeed you as a couple. Getting the right invitation is everything!

But where to begin?

Well, for me it was something that needed to be classic and elegant. My wedding was at a country house manor in the middle of Cheshire. I wanted my invitations to reflect the grandeur of the establishment in which my nuptials were taking place whilst featuring a vintage 20s twist.

I trawled the internet frantically searching for inspiration; I Googled, Pinterested and Facebooked my way through various images of other people’s invites. These ranged from the good and the bad to the downright insane! Never quite finding what I was looking for.  There were many 1920s style invites and the classic wedding themes, yet I wasn’t inspired.

It wasn’t until a rather inane conversation with a work colleague that the idea of designing our own invitations was born. Simple! My husband-to-be was a Graphic Designer who had lots of experience designing business stationery – surely he would be able to rustle something up? Not only was this a seemingly genius idea, it was also highly personal to us. Our invitations were going to be our own, one of a kind! The idea seemed the perfect solution.

We took inspiration from two sources — the first being a design from the book The Great Gatsby. The second being the Prada Candy perfume box. Armed with our ideas, my Husband-to-be began to work his magic. After a few initial drafts we arrived at our final design.

Once the design had been created it was a case of finding a printer. This was the real trick. We wanted someone who would bring our beautiful creation to life. Someone with skill and experience as well as the papers and finishes that we required. Many choices are important at this stage — the right translation of colour from digital screen to printed product, the quality of paper, the size and shape of the final product. Personally, I feel you need to consider the printer as the key element in this role as if anything goes wrong, you need to be able to rely on people who take your product as seriously as you.