Emma found us on a rainy Tuesday afternoon in October. She had been scrolling through wedding stationery for weeks, she told us later, and nothing had felt quite right — everything was either too minimal or too fussy, too modern or too traditional. Then she came across our Gilded Garden collection, and something clicked.
"It looked like it had been made by someone who actually loves paper," she said. We took that as the highest compliment.
The Consultation
Emma and James visited the studio a fortnight later, armed with a mood board of pressed ferns, glasshouse photographs, and a swatch of sage-green silk that would eventually become their table runners. They knew they wanted their stationery to echo the lush, verdant atmosphere of the Kibble Palace — the stunning Victorian glasshouse at Glasgow Botanic Gardens where they would exchange their vows.
We spent the afternoon talking through ideas, pulling paper samples, and sketching rough concepts at the workbench. By the time they left, we had the bones of something beautiful.
The Design
The centrepiece of the suite became a hand-illustrated maidenhair fern, painted in watercolour from a cutting Emma brought us from her grandmother's garden. We built the entire design around that single, delicate frond — letting it climb up the left margin of the invitation, curl around the reply card, and cascade across the envelope liner.
The palette was drawn directly from the Botanic Gardens themselves: a deep fern green, a soft gold for the couple's names (foil-stamped by hand), and a warm ivory base on our 600gsm cotton stock. The typography was set in a fine serif, with Emma and James's names letterpressed in two passes to achieve the depth of impression they wanted.
The Complete Suite
The final suite comprised eighty invitations, each assembled by hand in our studio. Every set included a letterpressed invitation with gold foil detailing, a reply card with a pre-addressed envelope, a detail insert featuring a watercolour illustration of the Kibble Palace, an illustrated map of the West End, and a custom belly band in that same sage-green silk.
We also designed their on-the-day stationery — an order of service with the maidenhair fern motif carried through, table name cards illustrated with different botanical specimens from the gardens, and a hand-lettered welcome sign that greeted guests at the entrance to the glasshouse.
The Day Itself
Emma and James were married on a bright Saturday in April, with sunlight pouring through the glass dome of the Kibble Palace and ferns rising all around them. Their guests told us afterwards that the stationery had set the tone weeks before the wedding — that opening the invitation had felt like receiving a small work of art, a promise of the day to come.
There is nothing quite like seeing your work held in someone's hands on their wedding day. When Emma carried her order of service down the aisle, the maidenhair fern illustration catching the light, we felt that familiar warmth that reminds us why we do this.
If you are planning a wedding at Glasgow Botanic Gardens — or anywhere that nature and elegance meet — we would be honoured to create something for you. Every suite begins with a conversation, and we are always ready to listen.