Weddingbee Blog

My handwriting sucks. While I just winged it and hand addressed our save-the-dates, much to my guests’ amusement (”No, Uncle John, my nephew didn’t help me address those envelopes, har har”), I wanted something more professional for our invitations.

See that? Not so good:

Okay, so I wrote that in Microsoft Paint, but my real handwriting is even worse.

There were several options floating around the hive - there is fauxligraphy, which I was pretty sure I’d still manage to mess up. There are the lovely wrap-around labels. There are some super-talented bees out there who DIY their calligraphy (not gonna happen). Then there is paying someone for their calligraphy talents. Bingo! We have a winner.

There is a huge range of calligraphy styles, services and prices out there. I didn’t want anything too crazy, so I focused on service and price. This is where things started getting crazy - the highest quote I saw was for $8 per envelope! Who in the what-now? I had not budgeted for that at all; luckily there are a number of calligraphers more in the under $2/envelope range. That’s where this Hamster stayed.

I finally zeroed in on one calligrapher, based on excellent word-of-mouth feedback and a bullseye in the price category. She sent me several samples of her work via email, but I really wanted to imagine how the different fonts would look on the envelope. That’s when I came up with The Hammy Calligraphy Mockups:

“Formal Script”

“Fine Hand”

“Formal Script with Open Caps”

See the beige rectangle? Yup, I made that! And that smaller white rectangle representing the stamp? Yup, made that too. And that, Bees, is the extent of my DIY skills. I know, pretty basic, but I sized them to mimic my outer envelopes, and after printing these mock-ups out, I got a really clear picture of how the actual envelopes would look when addressed. Don’t underestimate the power of the Microsoft Word envelope mock-up!

The three styles above were my absolute faves of the 12 or so styles the calligrapher sent me (she can also customize fonts on occasion). They are fancy but not too frou-frou, relatively easy to read, and let’s face it, 100x better than I could ever do. And which style did I end up choosing? Drum roll, please…

The Formal Script!

In my next calligraphy post: an intro of the lady responsible for that lovely script, tips to aid your calligraphy search, and a vendor Deja Vu moment.