Custom Calligraphy

Before fonts, before type, before letterpress printing, there was calligraphy. Calligraphy technology has not changed much over the past thousand years—it’s still made with a pen, piece of paper, and a talented hand. No two letters that a calligrapher draws will ever be identical; each calligraphy design is as unique as the wedding itself. We scoured the country to find the most unique calligraphers for our custom wedding invitations. True and passionate artists, they are dedicated to old craftwork and the creation of beauty.

Hand Calligraphy

You choose the calligraphy style that best suits you (and we offer a lot of styles), and then we make our letterpress or foil plates directly from the calligrapher’s artwork. Because calligraphy is done by hand, we’ll need three extra business days for design and there is a fee for each line of calligraphy. Revisions to calligraphy require up to three business days. Please take a minute to view our calligraphy wedding invitations for inspiration. Our calligraphers can even hand calligraph your envelopes to match! We can put you in touch with individual calligraphers for the pricing and availability of envelope addressing.

Design tips for using calligraphy in your wedding invitations

Consider using custom calligraphy as an accent, pairing a calligraphy style you love with a great font to highlight specific text in an invitation. Custom calligraphy looks amazing when used for the bride and groom’s names, or the location on a reception card, or the date on the reply card — opt for a classic serif or modern sans serif font for the remaining text. We charge by the line for custom calligraphy, so you can add just 1 or 2 lines to any card (or have the entire piece calligraphed — your choice!).

Get inspired by some fabulous real life examples of calligraphy wedding invitations on our blog. You can also browse our gallery of calligraphy wedding invitations and order samples, too!

Hand calligraphy monograms

Our custom calligraphy monograms are created just for you by our talented team of calligraphers. We make our letterpress and foil plates directly from their artwork. Because these calligraphy monograms are done by hand, please note that we’ll need three extra business days for design. You’ll receive up to three initial monogram options to choose from, and an additional fee does apply for this customization. Revisions to your calligraphy monogram require up to three additional business days.

Monogram etiquette

Double monograms generally include the first initial of the bride and groom’s first names. Wait until after the wedding to use that beautiful single monogram (traditionally the first letter of the groom’s last name) or triple monogram (the first letter of the groom’s last name flanked by the first initial of the bride on the left, and first initial of groom on the right).

Design tips for wedding monograms

You can add a monogram to a lot of different pieces. Monograms look really great inserted into one of our cartouches, or added to a patterned envelope liner, or printed on the front of a pocketfold, or printed on the back flap of your outer envelope. You can also create elegant monograms using any of our fonts — take a look at our library of monogram styles for more ideas. See unique (and real life!) monograms on our blog.