Shapiro-Kwilasz Wedding

2022. Special Event Collateral Design.

I was given the incredible privilege and pleasure of designing a set of collateral for the wedding of two of my great friends. What became an entire suite began simply with the invitation.

The inspiration for the ginkgo leaf motif throughout all pieces starts with the couple’s first encounter at Uchi, where the groom was the server and the bride was a guest. They ended up having their first date at the same Uchi a few days later, and, they rest is history, so they say. I, too, worked at the restaurant with the groom for many years, and as you could imagine, is a place of significance for the three of us. The ginkgo leaf, which the restaurant also happens to use in its logo, is a symbol of resilience, strength and hope, and as such seemed fitting to represent the bond of marriage and at once, pay homage to the place where it all began for the couple and their designer friend (a.k.a. Yours Truly).

The bride has a background in event planning, and worked closely with me to choose paper stock (special shout out to Don and Meredith for spending your busy afternoon touching paper with us) and the vendor who would produce the invitations (please see specs, credits and shout outs at the bottom of this page).

When she and the groom didn’t feel strongly about the script typefaces I presented, they decided they liked my handwriting instead.

And so I went on the journey of digitally hand lettering the invitation. We realized that it would look a bit strange if a calligrapher addressed the invitations in the traditional style, so I took on the task of manually hand lettering the addresses of all 85 guests. I was also asked to create the place cards for the wedding party’s seats.

Not only did a get to have a hand in orchestrating the wedding as the designer of the invitations, I was also asked to serve as a groomsperson.

I mentioned earlier that the groom and I worked at Uchi together for several years. One of those some years ago, I received some copper tokens that were left over from a promotion that the restaurant ran. I always thought they looked nice, but they mostly sat in my jewelry drawer, with the intention of one day making them into lapel pins. What design would these tokens happen to be, you ask? A simple ginkgo leaf.

Finally, my somewhat hoarder-like tendencies paid off! I had just enough tokens to craft and gift one to the groom and each person in his party, which we donned just before the ceremony.