I met Laura and Stuart early in January 2023, ahead of their wedding planned for May 2024 at De Courceys Manor in Cardiff, South Wales. They were keen to get save the date cards out (just over 12 months before the wedding), followed by invitations towards the end of year. They had a clear idea of their colour scheme, sage green, and knew they were after a clean, modern design. It was also important to them that all their stationery should be in both English and Welsh languages. Here’s how we incorporated all of these elements to create their suite of modern, bilingual wedding invitations and stationery.
Bilingual save the date cards
The simplest way to create a bilingual save the date card is to use a calendar format. The wedding date is instantly clear, highlighted with a little heart in this instance. Minimal text around the calendar is needed, and there is plenty of room to incorporate two languages all on a single sided card. A simple, minimalist monogram gave the modern feel that Laura and Stuart were looking for. We printed the save the date cards onto a beautiful sage green card, finished with recycled white envelopes.
See more: Save the date cards
Useful blog: What do you put on a save the date card?
Bilingual wedding invitations – pocketfold style
Laura and Stuart had a fair amount of information that they wanted to include in their bilingual wedding invitations. They were very keen to have more traditional invitations with the information printed, rather than on a wedding website. Their guests would have menu options for the wedding breakfast, which needed to be included along with a reply card allowing them to communicate their choices. And of course, all of this information needed to be in both English and Welsh.
We decided that a pocketfold invitation would be the best option. With a bilingual invitation panel and then double sided inserts for the additional details and menu. The reply card would also be double sided with tick boxes for menu choices, space for dietary requirements, and a line where guests could request their favourite song for the wedding playlist.
While this seems like an awful lot of information in one invitation, using double sided inserts meant that there wasn’t an overwhelming amount of loose sheets. The invitations panel, details, menu, and reply cards were all printed on recycled white card and slotted perfectly into a sage green pocket folder. Finished off with a white bellyband, featuring the same modern monogram we had introduced on the save the date cards.
See more: Pocketfold wedding invitations
Useful blog: What do you need to include in a wedding invitation?
Double sided bilingual wedding invitations for the evening
For the extra guests that would be invited to the evening reception, we created double sided bilingual wedding invitations. We decided that this was the best way to display both languages, as putting it all on one side of the card would become cluttered and confusing. Again we used the monogram design, and printed the evening invitations onto sage green card.
See more: Evening wedding invitations
Useful blog: How to word your evening wedding invitations
Bilingual wedding day stationery
Laura and Stuart were keen to have both English and Welsh language throughout their wedding day stationery as well. Here’s how we did that:
Bilingual wedding welcome sign
To greet Laura and Stuart’s guests, we created a bilingual welcome/croeso sign incorporating their modern monogram design, black text on white and a sage green border.
PRO TIP
Using a numerical date format on your wedding invitations and stationery is a great way to avoid having to have two language for that part.
See more: Wedding welcome signs
Useful blog: What wedding signs do you need?
Bilingual wedding confetti bags
Laura and Stuart chose to have their order of the day printed onto personalsied confetti bags. This is a great way to make one item of stationery fulfil two jobs. No need for a separate order of the day sign! The bags are fully recyclable and filled with natural dried flower petal confetti which is completely biodegradable.
See more: Confetti bags and cones
Modern sage green wedding place cards
For the place cards we kept the design super simple, printing onto sage green card to tie in with the colour scheme. For the majority of the guests, no translation was needed as the place card carried just the monogram design and the guest’s name. For Laura and Stuart’s though, they opted to go with Bride and Groom, alongside the Welsh translations: Priodferch and Priobfab
See more: Wedding place name cards
Useful blog: What names should you use on your place cards?
Bilingual wedding thank you cards
To round off their suite of bilingual wedding invitations and stationery, we created matching thank you cards. Again, these featured the monogram design, printed onto green card. A simple Thank you / Diolch yn Fawr on the front, with the inside blank for Laura and Stuart to write a personal message to each of their guests.
See more: Personalised wedding thank you cards
Useful blog: What do you write in a thank you card?
Modern, bilingual wedding invitations and stationery for a Cardiff wedding
So that’s how we created a gorgeous suite of modern, sage green, bilingual wedding invitations and stationery for Laura and Stuart’s wedding at De Courceys. We incorporated both English and Welsh language on all of their stationery items, from save the date right through to thank you cards.
Laura and Stuarts suite of bilingual wedding invitations and stationery was based on my Modern Monogram collection.
You can see that collection here.
The wedding venue was De Courceys Manor, Pentyrch, Cardiff, South Wales.
Check it out here.
Are you considering bilingual wedding invitations and stationery?
I hope this blog has been useful in showing you one option for creating bilingual wedding invitations. It’s not the only way though, and it will depend on the amount of detail you want to include in your invitations, and how much of that you need to have in both languages. If you are looking to have wedding invitations and stationery incorporating two languages, get in touch. I’m always happy to talk through the options available, and then give you some guideline costs, depending on the design and number of invitations you need.
More inspiration for bilingual wedding invitations: Welsh wedding invitations for Emily & Chris
Ready to find out more, book a studio visit, or arrange a call with me?
Wondering how you can incorporate a second language into your wedding celebrations?
As part of their ‘Bride to Be Diaries’ series, Laura has written a great blog post for Cwtch the Bride on how she and Stuart went about including Welsh language elements in their big day. Do go and have a read, there are some great ideas there:
Read the blog: How to use the Welsh language in your wedding
Want to save this blog post for later? Pin the image below to your wedding invitations board on Pinterest.
