Weddingbee Blog

I recently realized that I never gave calligraphy a second thought. I always figured I’d be devoting several weeknights to mastering curlicues while clutching a bottle of Wite-Out. Then, I started obsessing.

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I can’t use Wite-Out if my envelopes are blue! What if I mess up and scribble on the envelope and I can’t use Wite-Out and I run out of envelopes and someone gets an envelope that doesn’t match the others and then finds out that theirs was different than all the others and gets totally offended and doesn’t come!?Yes, these are the things that keep me up at night. I shove those qualms about foreign affairs aside and devote my worries to handwritten invitations. Seriously. This has to be some sort of sickness.

I decided to give myself a little assignment. Since I also act as the administrative assistant at work, I would perfect my handwriting by practicing my cursive on any packages or letters that had to go out to clients. This lasted all of Monday, until I realized that I couldn’t handle the pressure of having to have impeccable handwriting. I kept getting nervous and crossing my l’s and dotting my o’s and before I knew it, I was on Google researching calligraphers.

That’s when I came across this gem, Betsy Dunlap. The totally affordable, down-to-earth calligrapher who declared me as her new best friend in our last e-mail correspondence. She is the bomb dizzle, if I ever saw one. And yes, I just used the phrase “bomb dizzle.” I’m quite relieved to know that I won’t have to stress myself out over misspelled addresses and non-matching envelopes in the near future!

(This is the style we’ve decided to go with)

We decided this one was a little too informal, but still love it.

Fiesty.

Gorrrrrrrrrgeous, but a wee bit hard to read for the old-fashioned folks.

(All photos courtesy Betsy Dunlap)

Have any of you decided to tackle the calligraphy yourselves? Any pointers for those brides with more patience than myself?