Finding your font: Exploring wedding calligraphy styles
You may be only just getting to grips with pointed pen and ink, or you may be a few months into your calligraphy practice. Either way, when it comes to calligraphy styles for wedding invitations or events, you might not be sure where to start.
Read on to find out some helpful approaches to identifying your preferred calligraphy style and “finding your font”.
SPOilt for choice
The great thing about modern calligraphy is the variety of scripts and fonts that are out there now. Calligraphy has come a long way from the traditional Copperplate and Spencerian scripts — which are also so classically beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but there are so many modern variations to play with!
And, to be honest, with that amount of variety, it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming when trying to decide on a style for your wedding.
My Approach
The style that I chose for my own wedding calligraphy was a blend of the traditional and the modern. I liked the uniformity and elegance of copperplate styles, but I wasn’t aiming for perfection.
This was the alphabet I settled on: I liked the proportions of the letters and the flourished capitals.
I decided to keep my own wedding invitations as simple as possible. I got flat invitations from Vistaprint and they had a blank line to write in the invitees names — which I did in rose gold Pearl-ex ink.
My invitation and RSVP suite, featuring pointed pen calligraphy in rose gold ink.
From what I can see online, a large proportion of invitation templates now have a more generic wording that doesn’t require you to sign your guests’ names. But Vistaprint and other design tools may allow you to edit the design to include that blank line.
And the choice is yours - include your own writing or don’t… Fully-printed invitations look beautiful, and you may want to save your talents for another stationery element, such as the envelopes.
In any case, even if you do decide to go with fully-printed invitations, the one thing you will definitely have to handwrite is the envelopes. And they present a unique challenge, because they form your guests’ first impression of your wedding. (So, no pressure!)
Inspiration
Okay, first things first: how do you select your script? Well, an easy way to do this is to use a signature calligraphy script on your invitations in Canva, and then replicate that script in pen and ink on the envelopes. The finished effect would look so elegant and well put-together.
Here are a few tips and tricks you can try to nail down a wedding calligraphy font that you love, and upgrade your handlettering style to match.
Canva for Calligraphy
If you haven’t yet heard of Canva, then you’re in for a treat. Canva is a free graphic design tool (or paid, if you want more features) that has a whole host of design templates and fonts to choose from.
Many couples choose to design their invitations in Canva and use their ‘Print with Canva’ feature to order the physical prints. It’s so easy!
Canva’s selection of wedding invitation and save-the-date templates is excellent.
There is such a wide range of ready-designed templates to choose from that you are spoilt for choice. And, what’s even cooler about Canva is the selection of calligraphy-style fonts that it offers.
I have some favourites already, see my list below.
For example, if you find a calligraphy font in Canva that you like, you could print out that font as an alphabet exemplar and then trace over it to practice the lettering style!
This would be a great way to establish a cohesive style for your invitations, which you could carry over to the envelopes, the place cards, the signage - you name it. Just imagine how beautiful it would all look!
Styles I love
As I’ve been exploring Canva, I’ve found a few fonts that I think are perfect for wedding calligraphy. Many stationery designers use these fonts to create bespoke invitations and they charge for the designing and the printing.
The styles range from flowy to flourished, modern to elegant, and they are all very classy.
You could adopt one of these scripts for your own wedding calligraphy.
Make things Pinteresting!
If you don’t yet have a Pinterest account for your wedding planning, then I would highly recommend you start one.
With Pinterest, you can create your own ‘mood board’ focused on your wedding aesthetic and start collecting images from the internet to add to it.
There are hundreds of images of wedding stationery already on Pinterest, and a quick search for “wedding stationery calligraphy” gets loads of results.
You’re bound to find an aesthetic you love on Pinterest.
Do you have any tips you’d like to share? Feel free to drop me a message at gra.calligraphy@gmail.com.
Le grá (with love),
Louise x
Hi, I’m Louise!
I’m a calligrapher and engraving artist from Galway, in the West of Ireland.
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