Okay, I admit it, I'm a bad blogger!

Where has this year gone? It only seems like yesterday that we were opening our Christmas presents and here we are mid way through May already. All my good intentions to keep up with the blog have taken a bit of a back seat whilst we deal with our lovely couples and their wedding stationery orders.

It has been without a doubt our busiest year ever, and from June onwards we are welcoming 2 new members into the Wickedly Innocent camp. This will help us to take on even more orders, keeping lots of brides and grooms happy with our fresh, funky and fabulous wedding stationery. It will also allow us to dedicate more time to new designs, photo galleries and of course the blog.

As we are approaching the summer (finally are we getting some good weather?) I have to admit that blog post may be few and far between. I really do hope to be able to spend more time writing after our busy season, but of course my priority at the minute is to our current customers. I can't complain about being busy - especially when I'm doing something that I love!

Take care, and speak to you all soon!

Lisa x

Holiday notice and Winter Sale End Date

We are heading to Whinfell Forest on Monday 23rd January until Friday 27th January (to celebrate my mum's 50th birthday!) ... so just wanted to give you all the heads up.

As there is never any rest for the 'Wicked' (pun entirely intended!) I will be taking my laptop on holiday with me, so I can still be contacted by email. (Please be nice to me though, I haven't had a holiday in 2 years!). We will be working hard the weekend before and the weekend after we arrive home, so don't really envisage any changes to turnaround times ... we just wanted to let you know that there will be nobody in the office to take your calls. But you can still send your emails as normal and I'll be working for a few hours everyday whilst away.

Oh - and one final thing - we are being inundated with emails asking and begging us to give a deadline for when the winter sale will end. So we've sat down and come up with an end date of SUNDAY 14TH FEBRUARY - VALENTINE'S DAY!. So you've still got a couple of weeks left to get your orders in.

Busy Busy Busy - Our current turnaround times.

Wow, we've had a busy start to the month. In fact, it's been our busiest month in 6 years, so we want to thank the many many couples who have chosen Wickedly Innocent as their wedding stationer!

I just want to give a quick update to our current turnaround times:

As we're smack bang in the middle of a busy month, initial proofs are being emailed over typically 4 to 5 working days after you send over your wording and font choices. It'll certainly be no longer than this, so if it appears you haven't received anything, please check your spam/junk folder. Even better ... give us a bell on 02890 867184 and we'll let you know when they were emailed to you.

Amendments to initial designs are taking 2 to 3 working days. We really encourage you to check and double check your wording before you send it to us. If we get your approval straight from you seeing the initial proofs, this will speed the whole process up. If you aren't sure about fonts to start with, why not ask us to send you a few examples with your names in a variety of fonts. It's a lot easier to then apply these to your initial proofs rather than chopping and changing fonts afterwards.

Printing and dispatch of orders remains the same - once you confirm your final proofs for print, Chris will dispatch them 7 to 10 days later.

If you need your stationery in a real hurry (within 10 days or less) please contact us before placing your order to make sure we can accommodate this. Our design and print schedule is jam packed, so we really encourage you to order your stationery sooner rather than later!

New Year and Winter Sale

Sorry for the lack of updates recently! It's my New Year's resolution to make sure I post here more often.

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and New Year, and are looking forward to the plans ahead. For a lot of you, you will be getting married this year, so it's an exciting time.
We have lots of plans for Twenty Ten, or Two Thousand and Ten - however you want to say it. It's already been one of our busiest starts to a year, so we're being kept on our toes! We had a lovely break over the holidays, so we are back rejuvenated and ready to rock and roll.

To start the year, we have commenced our Winter Sale - giving 15% discount on all orders. Make sure to use the coupon code SALE at checkout to apply this discount. We are getting lots of emails asking when the sale will finish and this is hard to answer. We will continue the discount until our order books get filled up. It should be on for a couple of weeks though. And don't worry if you haven't confirmed your wording etc - you can place your order, and provide your information when you are ready.

I hope the snow isn't causing you all too much disruption. Over here in Northern Ireland, things have been fairly mild in comparison to mainland GB, so I sympathise with all those having trouble.

I'll be speaking to you all soon (I promise!).

Lisa x

New designs being added

Sorry that I have been awol for the past few weeks. We have been working hard on our new 2010 collection and we have had lots of autumn weddings.

We have launched our first new design online. It is called 'Simplicity' and I think it is gorgeous. It features a beautiful off white rose and will work with many colour schemes.

We will be uploading lots more new designs over the next couple of months. We are also organising some more photo shoots for the new year, so keep checking back to our website for beautiful new designs!

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be photographing our stationery for a new Photo Gallery section on our website. We will be showing off our invitations, rsvp and guest information cards, as well as our 'on the day' stationery including orders of service, escort cards, table numbers, menus and placecards.

Stripes

We often get asked what our favourite colour combinations are for our 'Stripes' collection. So here they are:

Our absolute favourite is the top left: Candy - it looks gorgeous in print. We do recommend that you use funky bold colours for this design - add a bit of drama to your wedding stationery!

New designs being launched October 09

I'm being kept very busy, so it's just a quick post today. Pictures speak louder than words anyway, so enjoy the images above of some of our new 2010 collection ... more to come soon!

What a difference a font makes!

One of the best aspects of our stationery is the ability for you to personalise your wording, layout and fonts. Using a swirly, calligraphy font gives a design a very formal and sophisticated look, whilst using a simple font can give a contemporary fresh impression.

Take the ever popular White Roses example below:

This first image uses the font 'Cambria' for both the couple's names and wedding date beneath. Using a baby pink font incorporates a little of the colour scheme whilst remaining very plain and simple. We've used lower case for the names - giving a contemporary twist to the invitation. The wedding date beneath is spelt out in words and is in upper case - contrasting with the names above. Now take a look at this next image. It's the same design but in comparison with the contemporary style of the invitation above, this example looks very formal and sophisticated. And all we've done is changed the font to Bickham Script for the couple's names and Trajan for 'Wedding Invitation' beneath. A gorgeous chocolate brown colour is used throughout.

Choose your fonts very carefully, as you can see it can make a big difference to the overall look of your stationery.

If you are cannot decide between a number of fonts, please feel free to email me at lisa@wickedlyinnocent.co.uk . If you let me know the bride and groom's names, I will provide you with a pdf showing you how they look in various different styles. Sometimes a name can look fantastic in a font you have initially disregarded.

Another Sneak Peek

A short and sweet blog post to show off one of our new 2010 collections (due to be launched next month). It is a simple heart design, but one we think will be very popular. It is shown above in shades of pink, but we will also be releasing the design in blue, green and purple.

Discount Code ...

It's been a gorgeous day in Belfast today, and we're in a very good mood. So, I thought I'd pop on a discount code!

This code is valid until midnight tomorrow (Sunday 13th September 2009) and is limited to the first 3 customers only.

The discount code is SUNNYDAY and will give you 20% discount on your order.

Have a lovely weekend!

Lisa x

UPDATE: The code has been used twice already, so is only valid for one more order.

Sneak Peek at a couple of our new designs

Thank you to all those who have been emailing us with your suggestions for our flower photo shoots. We were able to squeeze in a quick shoot last week and hope to do another few over the coming weekends.

Our pink gerbera designs have been so popular, but we had a request for another shade of pink - so we were only too happy to oblige.

We also shot some lovely deep pink lilies and were really happy with the result too.

We hope to launch our new 2010 range next month, so if you have any requests, make sure and email them over quickly.

New 2010 collections

We're nearing the end of the busy summer and our attention will be turning soon to our new 2010 collections.

We have planned a few photo shoots over the coming months, so will be visiting our favourite florist for some gorgeous and vibrant flowers. So ... we thought we would ask for some requests.

Are there any particular flowers you would like featured on our cards? If so, could you email your suggestions over to us at lisa@wickedlyinnocent.co.uk

Thanks in advance!

Lisa x

Busy Busy Busy!

Sorry that I've been neglecting my blog this week. August is always an extremely busy month for us, so finding even a few minutes in my day to jot a few thoughts down is hard!

I just wanted to quickly update you on our payment methods. If you choose to pay for your order by bank transfer, you will get 3% discount on your order. We don't get charged by our bank for these transactions, as we do for credit card payments, so thought it only fair to pass the savings onto you guys.

It's almost midnight now, so I think I'll clock off work for the day!

Speak soon, Lisa x

Single Use Discount Code - Gone now!

UPDATE: The code has been used guys, so this one isn't valid any longer.

I hope you're all having a relaxing Sunday afternoon. We've got a discount code for one lucky customer : GIVEME20

This is valid for one wedding stationery order only, so once somebody has used it, it will become invalid on our site http://www.wickedlyinnocent.co.uk/

Speak soon!

Lisa x

Discounts & competitions

We will randomly give out discount codes to use on our site www.wickedlyinnocent.co.uk - probably only once a month or so, and they will be valid for 1 day only, so make sure you check the blog often!

Our first post!

Well, we finally got ourselves a blog (and Twitter, and Facebook page!) ... and are looking forward to sharing our stationery, ideas and general everyday goings on in the Wickedly Innocent camp.

I'm Lisa, and I'll be the one that keeps you all up to date. I'm the designer of our stationery, and my husband Chris is the printer (he'll be taking care of the Facebook page). We are a family business and we love what we do. We have a little boy - Joshua - who's almost 2 - and I'm sure you'll be hearing all about his antics as well!

That's all for now folks ... speak to you soon!

Lisa x