Design Suite Process - Part 1

Obviously, not much is happening in photoland here at Mthree lately - February and March are notoriously light for weddings. But the design side of things has been keeping me more than busy. As many of you know, I specialize in Wedding Design Suites - a full set of all your paper (and other) design needs for your wedding. I have a full complement of these clients this year, so if I can keep up with myself, you should see lots of beautiful paper goods on the blog.

There is one bride who is close to finalizing all of her invite pieces, and I'm so in love with her design, I asked if I could share the whole process on the blog, and she agreed. And so begins a multi-part series that should span a few months as we design everything needed for Naomi & Mike's wedding in June.

When someone inquires about a design suite, we sit down and talk about all of their plans and inspirations for the day. I try to get a good sense of the style, feel, formality and budget of the couple so that I can design a suite that is appropriate. I bring along tons of pictures and samples to sift through - which we do with great relish. We also talk about their specific needs such as invitations, save the dates, rehearsal dinner invitations, placecards, thank you notes, welcome packets, menus, programs, etc. I make a long detailed list of what they want, what they need, and some key choices so that I can make an estimate for them. Each estimate is based on all of the above and then quantity of each item they need, the type of materials they would like and the printing processes they prefer. These three things have a big impact on price. By far the biggest factor is the printing process they choose - laser, offset, serigraphy, letterpress, or engraving. I draw up a detailed estimate and submit it to the client. If it meets their approval, they sign it, send in a retainer fee and we begin.

Each client then gets a detailed design schedule - with so many clients, I have to have everyone worked into the calendar so that we don't get behind on anything. Invites have to go out when they have to go out, there isn't really much leeway there and having the schedule allows us to meet those deadlines. The schedule will tell them when they owe me information like info for their invites or the list of names for their place-cards and also when they can expect to receive designs for review.

Once we have the schedule in place it is time to get to work on some concepts for their invites. (If they ordered Save the Dates, we would do those first, but we are going to skip those in this series) Based on our conversations I come up with five or six ideas for their invites and send them to the couple for review.

For Naomi- I actually got to help design the look of her wedding a bit. She and I met because she is using the same photographer I had for my wedding and had seen the bridesmaid dresses for my wedding and wanted them as well. The photographer put us in touch and one thing led to another. I helped her find the dresses and then she came to me to help her design the wedding as well. What she wanted was similar to what I had done, but we changed it a bit. So Naomi's wedding will be vintage in sensibility, sweet, delicate in details and really just pretty. Her colors are a purply-brown taupe, champagne pink and off-white. All of her pieces will be serigraphy printed.

To start the process, I design just the main invite piece. Once a design is chosen, I move on to the other components (rsvp card, reception card, etc) So, here are the design concepts I came up with for Naomi (all designs are copyright Mthree Studio):









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Which design do you think they ultimately chose?
More to come in Part 2...