WEDDING NEWS

From County Weddings

All the latest wedding news for couples getting married in England and Wales, along with bridal fashion and beauty inspiration and honeymoon ideas.

We talk to Bailey & Beau, a wedding stationery company with creativity at its heart

We talk to Bailey & Beau, a wedding stationery company with creativity at its heart: Image 1

Please give us an overview of your business and what makes you different?
Bailey & Beau represents the all the loves in my life. The love of working with people, discovering their stories, and the love of helping them to bring their visions to life. We are strongly focused on customer service, and have a "nothing is too much trouble" attitude, and we work with our clients every step of the way. We also believe that luxury shouldn't have to cost the earth and try to provide affordable and quality products that don't break the bank.  

What's your background and why did you launch your business?
I created Bailey & Beau in 2014 as a creative outlet to design all kinds of lovely things as an escape for my every day job of a junior Graphic Designer straight out of Uni. As you can imagine laying out type in to 100 page documents wasn't the most exciting thing in the world to do everyday! Now a fews years later I'm growing as a small business and I get to have fun while doing it, and to me, theres no better work in life! Its amazing to be able to work with new people everyday and help them create a vision for their wedding day.

What's your favourite type of wedding to work on?
It's alway nice to work along side couples who would like bespoke designs. We have a lot of house styles that we personalise, however when we get to have a bit of creative freedom and design an invitation suite from scratch based on a few ideas, its amazing to see the reaction of the couple when they view if for the first time and its everything they wanted!

We talk to Bailey & Beau, a wedding stationery company with creativity at its heart: Image 2

What's your top tip for couples planning a wedding?
Add a fun question to the RSVP, it helps guests feel involved in the festivities from the moment they open your invite! Ask for their favourite dance song or drink of choice and enjoy reading their responses.

Also, purchase more than you need. So if there is anyone you have forgotten, it's covered and so you have one for your photographer to capture on the day. Plus you would have a spare, to keep one for yourself as a memory.

What's the most common question couples ask you?
The question we are asked all the time is "Can we change the colour scheme?", most of our couples like to personalise the designs to fit their needs and we are more than happy to oblige. We will work them to incorporate their colours schemes, ideas and design a unique, individual invitation that they love!

Visit www.etsy.com/uk/shop/BaileyandBeauPaperCo

Still looking for Wedding Stationery?

The Ink Pot

The Ink Pot

FAS I still remember standing in a stationery shop in Guernsey aged 12 waiting for my dad to finish a meeting. I didn't have any money to spend but I was happy just looking at all the pens. I am surprised they didn't ask me to leave as I am sure I was there for over an hour. At the time I lived in the middle east and was at boarding school in Edinburgh. I remember an absolute obsession with scratch and sniff stickers when living in Bahrain and I loved the independent stationery shops in Edinburgh where I spent most of my pocket money on brightly coloured notepaper which I convinced myself I needed to write home. Not sure I did much of that... Sorry mum.

Fast forward many years - we don't need to say how many - and I was a litigation lawyer and spent my days helping businesses resolve commercial disputes. It is fun and challenging at times but my stationery requirements were limited. Truthfully I had forgotten about the joy I obtained from stationery until Eva, my 12-year old daughter, discovered bullet journaling and spent a vast amount of her pocket money on one from abroad. I couldn't quite believe she was prepared to spend that much money on a notebook and she suggested we start a business selling high-quality journals because she was sure we could develop some which would be popular given the difficulty she had encountered finding one she liked.

I told her we could do it if she came up with a name and logo - thinking that would put her off - and she promptly came up with The Ink Pot and drew the logo which we use today.

We started very small with our Original A5 Dot-Grid journal in five colours. We couldn't believe the reception the journals got at our first sale - they sold out - and we now have a much larger range with A5 and B5 journals, lined and dot-grid, cork-covered journals as well as linen-covered and journals with black, Kraft and white paper: 33 journals in total and a wider range is coming.

I was concerned that someone could just come along and copy our journals and I asked Eva what she thought and she suggested we offer to customise journals for people so that they can choose the colour they want, the image they want on the front and the foil colour. It was, in my view, a genius idea for a 12 year-old and she even drew some of the images we use today. Others are drawn by our neighbour, Anne, who is a wonderful artist who illustrates children's books.

Today I manage the business whilst Eva is at school, juggling with the legal business and the three dogs. Eva is the creative brains behind everything we do and I do the stamping, packing and, the best bit, buying all the pens!

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