As we planned our wedding, we made every single decision with the guest experience in mind, starting with the invitations. Our vision was for them to be this physical representation of two families coming one, celebrating our marriage. Aesthetically, we also wanted them to be timeless yet modern and very grand. Betty from Scribbles and Swirls went above and beyond to make all our custom wedding invitations so perfect, and we couldn’t be more grateful to her.

Our Culture

When designing our custom wedding invitations, it was extremely important to us for our culture to be very much present. This meant including many things, the first being translating the invitations into Vietnamese. This took my mom and I hours, as I’m not as familiar with formal Vietnamese, and it was so worth it to be able to honor my family in this way.

Working on these invitations, I also learned in our culture, there are two sets of invitations. One set is for the bride’s family and friends with her name at the top and the other is for the groom’s family and friends with his name at the top. We made sure to incorporate this tradition and printed two separate Vietnamese invitations.

Finally, we added a custom Red Envelope in accordance with Lì Xì (Lucky Money), which is a big part of our culture. It’s Vietnamese tradition to give money to newlyweds as a symbol of good fortune for their marriage, and I asked that we print both a Vietnamese and Chinese greeting on the envelope. We also added the meaning of the Red Envelope for those who are unfamiliar with the tradition.

Blogger Hoang-Kim Cung's custom wedding invitations with gold envelopes, calligraphy, and curated stamps

Blogger Hoang-Kim Cung's custom wedding invitations with gold envelopes, gold ribbon, and black envelope liners

The Design

We wanted to make sure our guests felt special before they even opened our custom wedding invitations. Betty smartly recommended going with a custom vertical envelope so our guests wouldn’t have to rotate anything upon opening. We went with gold because it matched our color scheme, hid any dirt or nicks that occurred in transit, and emphasized the grandness we wanted everyone to feel. The stamps were also very deliberately done as well. I spent a lot of time curating stamps that represented us and playing around with the layout on each envelope.

Blogger Hoang-Kim Cung's custom wedding invitations with gold beveled edges and letterpressed text

Blogger Hoang-Kim Cung's custom wedding invitations for traditional vietnamese buddhist wedding ceremony with gold beveled edges and letterpressed text

The invitations themselves were made with a substantial cardstock, letterpressed with a gold beveled edge. Every part of it feels so good in your hand and is very luxe! For the family and close friends who would be attending to our intimate Temple ceremony on Friday, we included a formal invitation for that as well because I didn’t want it to feel like an afterthought.

Blogger Hoang-Kim Cung's custom wedding invitations with letterpressed wedding response cards and envelopes

Blogger Hoang-Kim Cung's custom wedding invitations with black dress code card

Many of the decisions we made for our custom wedding invitations made things more laborious, but to us it was worth it because we were able to share something with our guests that was personal to us and made them feel special at the same time. None of this would have been possible without Betty from Scribbles and Swirls and we couldn’t recommend her more!