– In this video we're talking all about one of my favoritewedding details to style, the invitation suite.
Getting beautiful images of the stationery and invitation suite isnot only a lot of fun but to your couples willcherish it and editors love it.
Having beautiful professionallooking flat lays of the paper details will instantly elevateyour wedding galleries and we'll help you get featuredand high end wedding blogs and magazines, which isone of the best forms of free marketing foryour photography business.
So if you're wantingto improve your craft, get more bookings and havea lot of fun while doing it, let's dive in.
If you're new to mychannel, I'm Chelsea Nicole and I share photographytutorials, tips and business and marketing strategy videosto help you improve your craft while building your own fun, vibrant and wildly profitable empire.
Check out my other videosif you're looking to build the photography business of your dreams.
This video is part of a series on shooting and styling flat lay images.
In the last video we talked about the five essential stepsfor every great flat lay including how to select yourprops, finding the best light, choosing an awesome background and the basic essentialsfor putting together a great flat lay image.
If you haven't seen that video yet, I definitely recommendchecking it out after this one.
The same exact concepts apply when photographing the invitationsuite and in this video, we're gonna be taking a little bit deeper on the styling side of things and styling out three differentinvitation suites together.
I wanna give a big shout out to my favorite invitationdesigner, She Paperie, for giving us these beautiful invitations to play with today.
So let's get started withinvitation number one.
I chose this backdropbecause I really loved the neutral colors ofthis invitation suite and I really love a white on white look.
So I wanted a white backdropto go along with this one, a very clean minimalist look but I also wanted that bit of a texture just add that littlebit of added interest.
So to get started styling things out we have all of our piecesand in a typical suite you'll have the maininvite, an envelope that that goes in, an RSVP with an envelope and this is the finalversion of the invitation when it's all wrapped up.
So thinking in terms of visual hierarchy, we always like to start with our main subject of the image first, which is always for an invitationsuite, the main invite.
And I'll typically place this towards the center ofthe frame, not always, the main thing is that you want the eye to be leading back to the invite.
But a good starting pointis usually to kind of put it relatively center.
And then I start building on big to small, around the invitationwith the other elements and kind of play with thelayout of how things will fall, thinking of it in termsof having a nice flow.
And so this just takesa little bit of playing to see how things will best overlap.
And I'll play usuallywith moving things around a few different waysuntil I finally decide what I like best.
And I actually like this even better.
And then after I get a general layout that I'm liking the flow of it, I'll add in risers to givea little bit more depth to the invitation suite.
And these are just clear acrylic pieces that lift the piecesof the invitation suite to different levels I might reverse that.
I'm gonna tuck these two into each other.
And so when overlapping pieces, you wanna be sure to bevery intentional about it.
If I were to have it like that, it wouldn't look quite intentional.
So you wanna overlap intentionally when you're overlapping.
And then for the rest of the pieces, you want to make sure allthe lines are nice and even.
So I'm liking that.
So I'll usually start with my paper goods and then I'll startadding in other elements.
So we're working again, visualhierarchy is big to small.
For kind of a minimalist look, I really love these little ring dishes.
Lemme just fill in like thosetwo little gaps right there.
And I'll often see how things look and then oftentimes play with like, just taking away one element.
And I actually think this is too much.
I really love elements of three.
And right here, I love that, this along with the waxseal, creates three circles and it just really guides your eye through the frame coming fromthe invite down around, up, and then back to the invitations, I'm actually really lovingthe flow of this image.
The final step is justto finish it off with little finishing touches.
And I love that this kind ofplays off of the calligraphy on the wedding and below and I'll probably evenlighten up the scissors just a tad imposed to have that same gray.
And then I'm just gonnabring my ribbon in.
And since we have this nice flow, I'm gonna have the ribbon kind of mimic the flow we have going on in the image and you just kind of wrap through.
And the last little element I wanna add in is just these little vintage stamps, I get all my vintage stamps fromLittle Postage House on Etsy, because I just love her littlecurated collection of stamps.
And I love this set right here, just to add that little extra touch.
And then I usually justtake a photo from above with my iPhone beforetaking the final image just to make sure all myline work is straight, but this looks pretty good to me.
So this is our first invitation suite.
(gentle music) This next invitationsuite from She Paperie includes a little bit bigger suite, we have our main card, our envelope and we also have in addition to the RSVP, a details card and a menu card with this little flag place card.
So we're gonna incorporateall of this into the suite and usually when photographingan invitation suite, I'll photograph two different versions, the one that's more of a grid, more like the last invitation suite and then the second style is more organic and that's what I wanna do for this one to show case a littlebit more organical look.
And we start the same, we always like to startwith our main piece, and so I'll place that towards the center and start bringing in someof the bigger elements.
And I like to start byjust generally placing the pieces on my board, and then I'll start bringingin my little risers.
And then after I have the papers in, I'll start bringing in other elements.
I might even like placingthis on a little dish, just to get that little added dimension.
And with this, you don'thave to see each and every little detail but sincewe can kind of see the, just the heads of those, ofthe menu and the details, I like seeing them and then I'm gonna just bringin some floral elements.
Lemme move everything up a little bit.
And for the floral, I just want it kind offraming the invitation suite.
And since we have this nicekind of S curve going on, I'll continue with that flow.
And I just want to balance this side of it with a nice curve on this side too.
So I'll bring theseflowers kind of coming up and just the few little finishing touches.
And then the final thing I like to do is just add in touches of greenery.
And since I don't have accessto real floral right now I'm using the floral that Ihave within my styling kit and I actually just went and forage in and around the neighborhoodfor some greenery.
These little leaves are really pretty but I like how this mimics the leaves on the invitation suite.
And then I'll just kind of add things and play around with thingsuntil it looks right.
So I think that's looking pretty good.
The final thing I like to do, is just kind of take a look at the overall aesthetic of the board, I actually think that it's looking just a little bit cluttered.
So I might take away just thislittle ring dish right here, to clean it up a little bit and give it a little bit ofbreathing room and white space.
And I might even flipthe top of this mist box, I'd like put that ring up there.
And that just brings all of the attention back to the middle, while still having this really beautiful framing of it, A really nice S curve that leads your eyes through the frame of the photo while being nice and organic.
So that's looking prettygood for this invitation.
And then I'll of course still do a more grid type invitation and those two different styles you can get a lot of different looks for, in tighter, get like the full thing and then also get different angles of it.
This next flat lay we'regoing to do vertical and I'm gonna use a tray, we have just invitation with envelope and this cute little feather place card which I'm going to incorporate just 'cause I love that little element.
We need to go ahead and bring our tray right into the center of my board.
And for my trays I liketo lay a piece of fabric.
This is just hand dyed, gotten from Silk and Willow, and I'm gonna drape itjust loosely across.
I'm gonna open this up and we're going to useinside of our envelope to kinda house our card.
Place that right in the center.
And then for our little feather I'm just gonna bring it rightdown here at the bottom.
If I wanted, I could evenbring in some floral pieces.
Something like that isreally pretty, love it.
And there you have it.
Just a nice, simple flat lay.
The layering gives it alittle added dimension while still being nice and simple.
Hope this inspires you to get out and create your own styledinvitation flat lays.
If you enjoyed thisvideo, give it a thumbs up and drop me a comment, I would love to know, do you like more of thestructured grid flat lays or more of the organicinvitation flat lays? I hope you're enjoying thislittle flat lay series.
Be sure to watch the other videos and also keep an eye out for the next one, all on textured styling boards.
I'll see you guys in the next video.
.
