Ten Great Sources for Unique Wedding Invitations

One of our fall clients, Robin, recently sent me images of her “Save the Date” card from Minted.com, which incorporate two photographs from their engagement session with Kyo.

Robin loves design like me, and I loved seeing the simple layout she chose to highlight their pictures. When it comes to design, nine times out of ten, “less is more”!

There are so many incredible online sources for great stationery and wedding invitation design. When Wedding Paper Divas and its sister company Tiny Prints came onto the scene in 2006, they quickly dominated the online invitation market with their emphasis on great design, affordable customization, and aggressive marketing. They are still a great resource, both for ideas and for products, but make sure you check out some of the other companies below.

Minted.com This is the company Robin used. Minted is a “global community” of designers, located in 43 countries, and the company runs “design challenges” allowing users to vote on their favorite designs to be offered on the site. It’s now one of the most popular sites featuring outstanding crowd-sourced invitation and stationery design.

Papersource.com is a great resource for DIY invitations, offering a wide selection of paper, envelopes, stamps, ribbon, and other crafting supplies for DIY invitations, as well as traditional printed invites.

Pinhole Press specializes in photo invitations printed on ultra thick premium paper. They have a carefully tailored selection of designs, with a focus on simplicity and classic modern typography.

Oh So Beautiful Paper is a blog about paper crafts and design, with an enormous archive of invitation ideas and portfolios of some of the best individual wedding invitation designers. It also offers loads of great DIY tutorials for the crafty bride.

Etsy is, of course, an inexhaustible trove of designers and artists. On Etsy you can find the full spectrum of possibilities: everything from inexpensive printable templates for DIY invitations to completely custom, hand-drawn printed invitations on luxurious cardstock.

Bellafigura specializes in letterpress printing — not just striking invitations, but also coasters, website cards, direction cards, menus, programs, and more. A family-owned business based in Syracuse, NY, they provide personalized service and are very committed to green printing (they are members of one of our favorite non-profits, 1% for the Planet).

Elum Designs is another letterpress purveyor offering fashion-oriented “couture invitations.” Their designs are really different and use bold, unusual colors.

Antiquaria started as a vintage housewares company and morphed into a design studio after an overwhelming positive response to their custom rubber stamp designs and initial launch of invitations. They are featured regularly on Oh So Beautiful Paper blog. Their rubber stamp wedding invitations are a super fun option for the DIY lover.

What’s your favorite online stationery design store?