I recently designed a custom wedding invitation for one of my dearest friends, Saja, who is engaged to a charming young man named Aaron. I met Saja when I worked at the student newspaper in college and we are both very familiar with working on a deadline (and leaving things until the last minute!). Wedding planning was not immune to this habit.
At two months before the wedding, she had settled on a venue and a dress but not much else! Overwhelmed by the amount of decisions she had to make in a short time, she basically gave me free reign on invitation design with only a few key elements:
- A science and/or journalism theme. (He’s in food science; she’s in journalism.)
- Somewhat formal.
- Colors: red, teal and royal purple.
If you couldn’t already guess, blending science and journalism in a formal-ish invitation with bold jewel tones is a bit of a challenge (Saja teased me a couple days later by suggesting we add peacock feathers to the mix!).
Since time was of the essence, and I couldn’t come up with a brilliant fusion design of science and journalism, I just went with my gut. Playing off of the double meaning of “chemistry,” I created a graphic of an atom with a heart for the nucleus and two electrons (not scientifically accurate, I’ll admit!) and included a monogrammed option as well.
I’d kept it fairly simple in order to heed Saja’s request of formality, but she and Aaron decided they’d prefer less white space without adding a plain border. Their next set of choices included two variant borders and a third fringed with multicolored bubbles.
In the end, Saja and Aaron preferred #3, which I thought appropriate given Saja’s bubbly personality!