Normally we hear the designer’s perspective on a particular wedding invitation, but today we’re lucky to hear from both the designer and the printer of these beautiful gold foil architecture-inspired wedding invitations and save the dates. Such a treat! Designer Ryan DePaola drew inspiration from his adopted home town, Los Angeles, for both the invitation and save the date design, then the talented production team at Mama’s Sauce brought the design to life through a combination of screen printing, letterpress printing, and gold foil!

First, a few notes on the design inspiration from designer Ryan DePaola: Our wedding suite was inspired by our venue, its location and what the two together represented to us. We choose to incorporate both ourselves as well as the city itself in our invitation to further integrate the two as one. The foil line work and flourishes are really an homage to the city of LA itself and the impact it has had – not just in style and architecture, but to us.

LA is where my fiancé and I first met and dated, so for the save the dates I wanted to pull in all the beautiful architecture of all the buildings in downtown LA that had had special meaning to us. Where we had our first date all the way to our pizza spot. Where we had built our relationship and where we are solidifying it.

From Mama’s Sauce on printing and production: Ryan’s suite was ultimately letterpress and foil in the end, but for his Save the Date we also incorporated screen printing. That was the only piece in his suite that utilized a different paper. We chose to to go with the smoother, less fibrous, Neenah Classic Crest Solar White for the Save the Date to ensure the half tone screen printed portion of the design (the marbling) printed as consistently as possible. Little technical decisions like this can go a long way when you’re really thinking through the best way to bring art to life within a process, as each design marries (pun!) with the process and paper differently.

The remainder of the suite was foil stamped and letterpress printed on double thick cotton paper that resulted in a strikingly consistent impression from both processes. They were pre-duplexed to double thick, as there wasn’t any relief printing on the backside.

Suites like this are a dream to work on for us. The designer is the client, and in this case the designer-client knows how to design well for our processes, yet is able to lean into our expertise for suggestions in order to make the package really shine, like foil is supposed to do.

Thanks Ryan and Mama’s Sauce!

Design: Ryan DePaola

Letterpress, Foil, and Screen Printing: Mama’s Sauce

Check out the Designer Rolodex for more tal­ented wed­ding invi­ta­tion design­ers and the real invi­ta­tions gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Mama’s Sauce