Damask Letterpress Wedding Invitations | Custom Design

Hello letterpress lovers!

Above are a few photos of some custom letterpress wedding invitations we designed and printed (in-house on our cast iron printing presses from the late 1800s and early 1900s) by hand for couple Christy and Jaspal. The couple married in October 2012 at the historic and exclusive Vancouver Club.

Our couple wanted a very elegant and traditional design for their letterpress wedding stationery that reflected the beauty and tradition of their chosen venue. We used a very traditional script font for the script text, a traditional border, and a damask pattern for the border background.

This was one of our most challenging wedding suites to print to date because of the hairline registration between the grey border and the pink border background (in letterpress printing each color is printed separately, and it is necessary to ensure that each color meets [and thus does not overlap] the others precisely. If this is was not done correctly, the invitations would have been "out of register" – or in other words, the grey border and the pink border background would have been misaligned, printed with an overlap, or printed with a gap between them – and the resulting prints would have been unusable). Blood, sweat, and even a few tears were literally shed over this invitation suite :)

This custom letterpress invitation suite was printed on Crane Lettra's luxurious 110 lb. Pearl White cover, and the envelopes were printed on a 32 lb. charcoal grey envelope. See the close-up photos for a view of the impression from the letterpress print that provides a timeless, tactile quality that other printing methods cannot.

These photos were taken at Historic Stewart Farm, a city heritage site located a few minutes from our studio. It is a wonderful place to take photos, and many wedding photo shoots take place here because of the beautiful and rustic features of the park and farmhouse. I usually take my daughters with me to shoot here because they love to explore the pole barn, the heirloom and vegetable gardens (the turnips were just about ready to harvest), the apple orchard, and the root cellar is of particular intrigue to my oldest daughter. You can walk along the water and check out the boats at the dock, or walk through the paths on the grounds and do some nature hunting.

Farmhouse photo © and courtesy of the City of Surrey