BC Professional Wedding Awards Finalist 2013 | Best Wedding Stationery

Did you know about the WOscars? a.k.a. the Wedding Oscars? As per their website, The Professional BC Wedding Awards "is an independent, unbiased organization dedicated to finding and awarding the best of British Columbia's dynamic and creative wedding industry. These awards have established a platform to recognize some of the amazing creative talent, companies and individuals that make up British Columbia's wedding professionals".

This year Sunlit Letterpress was recognized as a finalist in the Best Wedding Stationery category – and we are beyond thrilled. And let me tell you, the WOscar gala is always a fun night! Surrounded by the most talented and creative professionals in our industry, my friend and I enjoyed the yearly catering competition and the antics of the MC Fred Lee – who this year wore a wedding dress. Unfortunately, none of the winners were particularly long-winded in their acceptance speeches that night – which was a real shame, since Mr. Lee promised a Rob Ford tackle of anyone who spoke for too long. I really wanted to see Fred Lee's Rob Ford tackle. Maybe next year...

Congratulations to all the winners and finalists in all categories! I'm already looking forward to next year!

Happy New Year!

Hello friends – I hope this post finds you well and enjoying the holiday season! Since 2013 is about to arrive, I thought I would do an end-of-year post with a few updates.

First, I am happy to announce that Sunlit Letterpress was a finalist for Best Wedding Stationery for the 2012 British Columbia Professional Wedding Awards. The photos below are of the invitations that placed us in the top three for the British Columbia.  These invitations were for Sharon and Faizal, a great couple from Vancouver that was married in Waikiki, HI, earlier this year.

This was the most technically difficult invitation I have designed and printed to date – with envelopment printing and very tight (hairline) registration for the pieces with the background pattern and borders. Forgive the printer jargon – when one color is printed first and the second color is printed on a separate pass, and the two colors meet exactly at a point and the inks cannot overlap or be separated by a gap – this is hairline registration. With a 100+ year old Chandler and Price printing press, getting the registration right is nightmarish to say the least. Although you can’t see it on the paper or in the photos, there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears in these pieces!

A special congratulations to my friend and fellow invitation designer Tammy of Uniquity Invitations who was also a stationery finalist this year!

Although I had hoped to get back to work in mid-December, I have not quite made it back. As I mentioned in my previous post, we welcomed our second daughter in mid-October. As wonderful as having a second child has been, I was unprepared (or just had unrealistic expectations) for how much less time and energy I would have left for work/studio time with two young children. Most days I struggle to find time to fit in a shower, let alone get any work done. Our baby girl has had some gastrointestinal issues that have made things much more challenging than with our first. I am hoping that as we settle into more of a routine after the New Year that I will find a bit of time to head back to the studio – just in time for the start of wedding season. However, this year I will definitely have to cut back on the number of projects/clients that I take on because I just won’t be able to handle a heavy workload like before.

This year has been a very tough one for our family on a personal level, and I am very much looking forward to it being over. Other than the birth of our second little girl, watching our oldest daughter grow and change, and attending a private party in Vegas hosted by Michael Jordan and Alan Thicke (a story for another day!), this year will go down as one of my worst. I have experienced struggles and challenges in many areas and they have tested my strength and resilience. I am very grateful to those who were there for us during the hard days – especially when my husband was very ill - and who continue to be ready to help. We are working with a neurologist and hope to have more answers about my husband's condition soon.

I hope 2013 will be better for us all!

Best wishes to you and Happy New Year!

Happy New Year - Welcome 2012!

So we are a little early - it's not even New Year's Eve yet, but I wanted to get a head start on the blog in case I don't get to it over the next couple of days. New Year's is never really a huge deal around our house, but it is what I consider the last weekend of the holidays. This year our holidays started early with a family trip to Maui, then to Vancouver Island for Christmas with my husband's family, and then back home for New Year's. I am glad to be back and spending some time cleaning around the house and getting things organized for 2012. One of my next big tasks is to go get myself a daytimer - my mother normally buys me the same one each year, but this year my parents are in California for 3 months, so we only really gave each other gifts that didn't need to be shipped. I am lost without my daytimer! Even though I have an iPhone, I just prefer to do my scheduling on paper - and I don't think this will ever change. Do you use your smart phone calendar or are you stuck to your paper daytimer like me?

In the spirit of getting organized, we just finally got the Sunlit Letterpress Facebook page set up. We used to have a group page back in the day, but it seems Facebook got rid of those and set up new business pages, so the old page got lost. So far we've gotten some portfolio shots loaded and a few other things, but we plan to also post news, event listings, coupons and other info here too. I hope you will "like" our page and join the group - we will send notices of new products and coupon codes out to our Facebook page members. I will be posting a clearance coupon for our Holiday 2011 goods shortly.

In other news, back before the holidays (on November 30th to be exact) we attended the BC Professional Wedding Awards Gala at Boulevard Casino here in Vancouver and Sunlit Letterpress was presented with the 2011 Best Wedding Stationery Award for BC. We are thrilled! We received a lovely trophy, an amazing bouquet, had oodles of photos taken and got to meet the "Wedding Belles" from TV and Fred Lee from CBC (Mr. Vanhattan). It was a fun night and on top of winning our award, my husband and I met old and new friends from the BC wedding industry and even got to play "Top Chef" judges as five different caterers were competing at the event for a catering award. From ahi sliders to smoked tomato shrimp, we enjoyed a feast of small bites. We also got to play around in the photo booth for awhile with props like mustaches and boas - do photobooths ever get old?


So that concludes this latest update - we wish you all a fantastic (and safe) New Year! If you are planning a wedding in 2012 and need letterpress invitations or are in need of custom letterpress stationery for your business or personal correspondence, please contact our studio - we look forward to working with you!