Wedding stationery for a wedding in Italy: a planning guide from London
A villa, a masseria or a table by the sea: how we plan the paper details when the wedding is abroad.
Start with the place
A wedding in Italy usually begins with a place people have travelled for: a villa above a lake, a farmhouse in the olive groves, a terrace over the sea. That place is the natural subject for the drawing. A photograph of the façade, the view or one detail you love is enough for us to begin.
Small Italian details read well on a box of about 55 × 36 mm: a lemon, a bridge, a bell tower, a line of cypress trees. Choose one or two rather than the whole itinerary, so each box still reads from across the table.
What it costs
A drawing by the studio is one fee of £100, charged once for the design, whatever the subject: your names, a monogram, the villa or a full scene. If you already have print-ready artwork, sending it adds nothing. The boxes are priced by quantity: £215 for 100 and £290 for 150, so with a new drawing they come to £315 and £390.
Most couples order about one box per guest, often 100 to 150, and keep a few back for the table and the photographs.
Settle the wording in both languages
Many couples mix English and Italian: names and the date in one, a short phrase in the other. Send the wording exactly as it should read, accents included, and read it slowly on the digital proof.
Nothing is printed until you approve the proof, and a drawing by the studio has revisions until it is right.
Delivery to Italy
Everything is made in London and sent with tracking by DHL, UPS or FedEx, and delivery is included in the price. In Italy any import duties are paid by the recipient when the parcel arrives, so give us the name of someone who can receive it. Visitors in the euro area see our prices in euros.
Standard delivery is about three weeks from the order. Express takes about two weeks (£75) and Priority about one week (£175); you choose at payment. Delivery dates are estimates, so plan to have the boxes in hand well before you travel.
Decide early where they should go. Some couples have them sent home and pack them in their luggage; others send them to the venue or the planner. Put the address, a contact name and your date in the brief.
Napkins and the rest of the table
Matchboxes, napkins and coasters are the pieces guests touch and take home. Napkins and coasters can be made in the same drawing and paid for in the same order as the matchboxes.
If you are planning more, the Wedding Suite brings invitations, menus and place cards into the same artwork.
Personalised wedding matchboxes: see prices and order
Image references
The reference photographs in this note show real weddings, tables and rooms photographed by others. They are not work by The Laldie and are used under the Unsplash Licence.
- A table under a pergola. Photograph by Steffen Lemmerzahl on Unsplash. Image: images.unsplash.com/photo-1689781307118-030db9290d38
- A villa above a valley, the kind of building that can be drawn for the table. Photograph by Yanapi Senaud on Unsplash. Image: images.unsplash.com/photo-1533554030380-20991a0f9c9e