a wedding should be as unique as the couple. so when you’re announcing the date to all your close friends and far flung relatives, we want you to tell everyone alittle bit about your love, your big day and all those little details in between that make up your story.

whatever your wedding wishes, wordshop can scheme right along with you. we work with dozens of small, local and creative studios and fancy ourselves word + color extraordinaires. come with your date and your dreams, and we’ll do the rest.

The Save the Date has a couple purposes:
1) To maximize attendance at your wedding.
2) Nail down the venue and start coordinating your other vendors.
3) To give you the a-ha! moment that you’re about to really tie the knot.

They come in two common forms: The Postcard and the Panel Card with the Envelope. There are pros and cons to both versions, and we’ve gathered the most common deal breakers and the deal makers.

First, with a postcard, this can happen:

Postcards are susceptible to everything the US Postal Service throws at it. They can get stepped on, smudged, ripped in half, and, sometimes, there’s a barcode that can cover up writing or a design element. Your guests could miss out on having a picture of you they could frame.

However, the most obvious difference is the price and environmental impact. If you’re looking to save both money and paper, the postcard is your best bet. You can get 100 double-sided postcards for less than a dollar a piece — completely custom done with your pictures, colors, and writing.

We, the wordshop. girls, consider ourselves advocates, not sales girls. The postcard also costs $.29 to send, as opposed to $.44.

Take a look at your options and what’s important to you. Maybe it’s the environment, privacy, or your budget. Tell us what you’re dreaming and we’ll find a way to make your guests excited to mark your day in ink.

There’s an awesome article from Offbeat Bride for invitation wording that won’t make you barf. And, while wordshop. may not always show our traditional side, we appreciate you or your parents may be spending mucho dinero for a classic, timeless event.

By LilyWillow Paper + Press

We, the gals at wordshop., have collected the most common wording for every scenario, and we’re happy to share our everything we’ve learned. Keep in mind that the parents who are hosting are the names that begin the invitation.

Very formal/church wedding

Casual/non-church wedding

Divorced Parents
This can be a touchy subject. To be frank, the parent who goes first is the one who is more relevant to the event — maybe contributing more money, time, or opinions.

Divorced parents with new spouses
Again, this can be a touchy subject depending on how close you are with your step parents. Normally, this is how it would be worded, and keep in mind, again, this also depends on which parent is contributing more to the wedding.

Parents with titles

Challenge: Accepted
The list of possible titles and wording is limitless, so we can’t fit all of them on here. Luckily, the wordshop. girls are masters at etiquette, so bring us the tone you’d like, the sticky situation, or a blank canvas, and we’ll work our magic.

Your guests’ anticipation for soaking up rays, while celebrating your life together, starts with the invitation.

Through your design and wording, let your loved ones know if they’ll be sporting their best aloha shirt while digging their toes into the sand and sipping a mai tai, or if they should bring a linen suit for photo ops under a cabana as you walk down the aisle.

Maybe you’re inviting them to literally take the plunge with you, or you’re letting them know your parents are excited to provide the first class treatment for everyone. Make your words build excitement and create dreams of an equatorial escape.

If you have any questions, ideas, or witty comments, give us a call (303) 477-9673 or email us: wordshop.denver@gmail.com.

~the wordshop gang~

tis the season for sparkles: tinsel, tree toppers and maybe a pretty little diamond for some left hands out there. wordshop knows that the holidays are a time for giving. December may be the end of a year but it’s also the very beginning of some drop dead gorgeous summer weddings. If you’re a summer bride, we’ve got some pretty sweet ideas to remind auntie melinda and your highschool besties to mark it in ink.

Let us know if you plan to swing by our little paperie in the highlands to talk wedding paper + the whole shabang. we can’t wait to see what you’re up to.

wordshop is on the look out for it’s next shopgirl (or boy!).

requirements: love of letterpress, paper, pen and all things in between and beyond. eye for design. personal flare. a brain bubbling with ideas. and hey, a cheery disposition never hurt anyone.

we kindly request that you send all inquiries to this address: web@wordshopdenver.com

thanks a mil!

some brides know just what they want. they know what they like, and they know how they want it done. such was the case the with bright, funny, feisty bride featured this month. it was such a treat to work with someone who had such imagination and intuition.

it was really important to capture the feeling of the old west with this bridal suite. we got to have a lot fun with this in the save the dates, a good place to be a little more casual. for these we went with lucky onion digital printing. don’t you love the language?

when it came time to do the invite, we had to take into account that this wedding had a large party traveling a long distance to a remote location. so we went with a pocket folder that had room for event, accommodation, rsvp and rehearsal dinner info.

the old west feel was still important but we wanted to dress it up a bit, so we took the concept created in the save the dates over to lillywillow, who did these gorgeous custom invites! we combined several design elements from lilywillow’s catalog to make this look work. many of lilywillow’s designs have that “colorado” feel that was so important to this event. it made creating the bride’s vision that much easier!

and didn’t anne’s vision get carried off in style? this was one wedding you didn’t want to miss!

we toss our cowboy hats in the air to the newly weds.

thanks to susan pacek photography!

dude and chick is our latest score here on meade street. and man are we happy to have found them! hailing from st. paul, minnesota they are a design savvy, super smart letterpress duo. they fit so swimmingly at wordshop we thought we’d find out a little bit more about them. so we chatted with katie (the “chick”) and now we’re sharing it with you. read on…

question #1. can you give us your top three things that inspire you as a designer?

Since I work from home by myself a lot, I’d say the biggest thing that inspires my design is what I listen too. My boyfriend’s a bit of an audiophile, and since I tend to get in music ruts pretty fast (my Better than Ezra music collection is still in embarrassingly regular rotation) he regularly sneaks onto my computer and creates mixes for me to listen too, as well as flagging new albums that the cool kids are loving each week. I’ve got playlists for every mood – motown, slow morning, 90′s pop rock… But I also spend quite a bit of time with my podcasts, books on CD, and NPR. If I’ve got a lot of pre-press cleanup to do (or cards to fold), it’s Morning Edition, Savage Love, This American Life, and currently A Million Little Pieces on tape. I’m always surprised at how the sounds going into my head make different sorts of things come out on paper.
I also have about a hundred ‘inspiration’ folders that clutter my desktop. Every time I see a color palette, idea, drawing style, or otherwise nifty thing, it’s screenshot and dumped in the folder. This ever-growing image bank is a visual to-do list that I go back to regularly to draw from. In addition, John and I collect old books at flea markets, posters, etc–really anything with a cool illustration style, and we have a little library that we can go back to when we need new ideas. We’ve found a ton of neat stuff from the fifties and sixties, and since we have such different eye for design, we’re constant poring over the same references and finding new stuff.

question #2. what was the first card you ever designed? tell us the story behind it.

Though I’ve always been a creative lady, I’ve also always been pretty practical. When I was little, I would take over the basement for the full duration of my holiday break from school and lock everyone out of “santa’s workshop”. I’d set up my little radio and tune it to KISN FM, (the oldies station! keep on KISN) then spent hours crafting christmas cards and placemats for our small family dinner we had every year. I really liked the assembly line feel that my work had to it – I made lists of the guests, and things that they liked, selected colored markers and pencils for each drawing, and then banged em out.
The piece I remember the most isn’t exactly a card – it was a placemat for my dad. Since he’s a cyclist, I drew Santa riding a modernized sleigh made from a bicycle…complete with a cookie-filled basket and a sort of hot chocolate dispensing keg. You can see where my priorities lie.

question #3. katie, i know you have been all over the country, what are some of your favorite local boutiques to shop in?

Minneapolis is really a great city for cool stuff – I Like You in NE is awesome (they have grass carpet!) as is Design Collective on 26th and Hennepin, ROBOTlove, and Hunt and Gather on 44th and Xerxes (which is more of an antique store than a boutique, but so so good that it can’t be overlooked).
But, of course, if I’m in Denver, wordshop is the best!

question #4. what is it that you value about cards in the internet age? what makes you feel good about getting a letter in the mail or a card on your b-day as opposed to an email or a facebook wall post?

I come from a family where, even though my mom lives all the way out in Portland OR, she STILL calls me a week before the birthday or special occasion of anyone we know. As in, “Hey honey, you remember Steven, my hairstylist? Well, just wanted to remind you his birthday is a week from Saturday, and I emailed his address to you, so be sure to send a card!”
I think that no matter how small the gesture (or how obscure the relation) it’s always so nice to get a little surprise in your mailbox addressed just to you. It takes time, and planning, and finding a stamp, and it just feels more thought out. I save cards I receive every year, and it just feels like a file full of lovin. Gmail has yet to warm my heart in this way.

question #5. what do you think makes dude and chick special? what type of person would love your cards the most?

Dude and Chick is special because it’s our own, it’s just us, and we make what we like. I think that since John and I are responsible for every aspect of our line, we pay attention to the details, right down to rounded corners and envelope colors (at one point we actually had more envelope options than cards in the line. Oops.) We firmly believe that cool people like our stuff, and we’ve found that to be true…I think most folks find something they like in our line.

thanks katie!

come get dude and chick in store now! tons of cute designs, guaranteed.

well, funny you ask, because we just took some snap shots of our latest in store faves. looks like it’s gonna be a little blustery this weekend (though in denver one never can tell), so why don’t you stick your head in and say hello? we’d be happy to give you the full tour. but for now, check out these goodies:

good text doesnt have to be on paper. that’s all were sayin’.

push up your sweater sleeves and look smashing for fall with these indian oak bracelets, $15.

one of a kind leather lovelies. earrings from burkina faso west africa. $24

not that we’ve forgotten our paper:

oh vera, seriosly? what doesn’t vera wang do with flair? fanciful correspondence; these boxed notes are printed on all cotton paper.

we go together cards. how about some every-day, no-reason, kinda-love? letterpress cards from our friends at sapling press.

see you soon!

as we head full steam into the holiday season, with all its bells, whistles, ugly sweater parties and gigantic meals, we can’t help but look a little wistfully back at summertime.

one of our favorite events of the summer was the anne be ice cream social, an exclusive event put on for clients and vendors who had given them a lot of love. they kindly asked us to do the invite for the event and we whipped this preppy, fun little number from pica press.

at the ice cream social, we set up a table and enjoyed the general good company and excellent goodies provided by happy cakes.

it was a great to get together with a bunch of other cool businesses in the neighborhood. thanks again so much to anna be, bridal shop extraordinaire, for including us.

we’ll be thinking fondly of ice cream socials and slip dresses while bundled up this winter.

thanks to cheryl ungar photography!