Lynn Russell of Satsuma Press is an absolute doll. Not only is she all talent (literally to the tips of her toes), but she is a sweet person and a fabulous guest blogger! Can’t ask for much more than that when you run a wedding blog!
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Arwen and Saul were some of my very favorite clients ever – so much so that we stay in touch even now, a year after their wedding. What began as an eucalyptus drawing for their wedding invitations ended with a tandem bicycle!! I love working on custom drawings because it pushes my own boundaries and keeps me thinking of new ideas for my own work.
I asked Arwen to write a few words about their experience working with me …
Letterpress makes me weak in the knees, and I’d loved the elegant, simple designs of Satsuma Press for a long time, so when Saul and I were planning our wedding, it was an obvious choice to have Lynn make our invitations! Since I grew up in Sonoma County and Saul is from Sydney, we thought we’d use a eucalyptus theme to highlight our shared childhood memories of their long, silvery green leaves. Lynn designed a beautiful eucalyptus invite, but in the end we decided it was a little too formal. We were getting married among hay bales in my parents’ neighbors’ field and planning a getaway on our vintage tandem bicycle, so we wanted something a little more lighthearted to give our guests a taste of what to expect.
We sent Lynn some photos and illustrations of vintage tandems and a hilarious back-and-forth exchange ensued, as Lynn and I argued for aesthetics and Saul demanded bicycle accuracy :-) Lynn’s husband, Ben, even jumped into the mix and helped translate Saul’s technical terms into visuals.
We couldn’t have been happier with the end result–I think the invite is jaunty but elegant at the same time, which was just the feeling we were looking for, and I never expected to have so much fun and laugh so hard during the process! A lot of people ended up drawing themselves riding the tandem when they sent in the reply cards, so the bicycle image ended up being interactive to boot.
The wedding itself was perfect and everyone loved that we bicycled over to my parents’ house for the reception so much that we had to do it twice!