Coastal Grandma Meets Rhode Island Summer: Our Custom Wedding Stationery

Real Weddings, Wedding Inspo

September 15, 2026

After years of designing wedding invitations for other couples, you’d think designing my own would have been the easy part.

It was not.

When you’re your own client—and you’ve spent years telling couples that their wedding invitations should set the tone for their entire celebration—the pressure is admittedly a little self-inflicted.

For our September wedding in Narragansett, Rhode Island, I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want anything that felt overtly nautical. No anchors. No navy stripes. No we’re getting married by the ocean, in case you couldn’t tell energy.

Instead, I wanted our wedding to feel like a Rhode Island summer: collected, coastal, a little nostalgic, textural and effortlessly layered. Think coastal grandma, but she’s throwing a really good wedding.

And because I’m a wedding stationery designer, that vision was never going to stop with the invitations.

The Inspiration: Coastal Grandma Meets Rhode Island Summer

When I started designing our coastal wedding invitations, I wasn’t necessarily working from a list of specific motifs. I was thinking about a feeling.

I wanted soft blues mixed with deeper ocean tones. Woven textures. Hydrangeas. Beautiful linens. Vintage details. Natural materials. A little old New England charm mixed with pieces that felt fresh and unexpected.

Basically, I wanted it to feel like we’d raided a really chic Rhode Island grandmother’s summer house—and I mean that as the highest compliment imaginable.

That distinction became really important as I designed both our stationery and the wedding itself. Having a coastal wedding didn’t mean that every single detail needed to be obviously coastal. In fact, I think the opposite is what made everything feel so cohesive.

A wedding theme doesn’t have to be literal to be recognizable.

Rather than adding a seashell to every surface or turning everything navy and white, we created a visual language through color, texture, materials, typography and a handful of intentionally chosen coastal references.

Our custom wedding stationery was the first introduction to that world.

Blue and white custom coastal wedding invitation suite for a Narragansett, Rhode Island wedding

Designing Wedding Invitations That Could Only Belong to Us

One of my favorite things about custom stationery is that it gives you the opportunity to create something that couldn’t simply have someone else’s names swapped in.

I wanted someone to look at our invitations and know that they belonged to our wedding.

Our ceremony and reception took place at The Towers in Narragansett, so incorporating the architecture of the venue was an obvious starting point. I created a custom illustration of The Towers that appears throughout the suite, including on the details card and inside the envelope liner (fun fact, we also had a local ceramist create Towers ornaments for our guest favors).

The envelope liner may actually be one of my favorite details. There’s something so special about opening an envelope and immediately discovering an illustration of the place where you’ll eventually be celebrating. Before our guests ever arrived in Rhode Island, they were getting a tiny preview of what was waiting for them.

Custom illustrated envelope liner featuring The Towers in Narragansett, Rhode Island

Custom coastal wedding invitations with venue illustration of The Towers at Narragansett

We also incorporated an architectural illustration for our after-party information, continuing the idea throughout the different events of the wedding.

These are the kinds of details I love most about custom wedding invitations. They’re beautiful, yes, but they also mean something. A venue illustration isn’t there just because we needed to fill space on a card. It documents a place that is now permanently tied to one of the biggest days of our lives.

And years from now, that’s what I want our stationery to feel like: not just pretty paper we mailed in 2026, but a little paper time capsule of the entire weekend.

Unique Shapes Without Making It Feel Gimmicky

I also wanted the suite to feel playful.

Wedding stationery can be elegant without being stuffy, and one of the easiest ways to add personality is to move beyond a stack of rectangles.

Our RSVP card was die-cut into a scalloped shell shape—a much more subtle nod to the coast than covering the invitation in traditional nautical graphics. The shape immediately makes the suite more interesting, but because we kept the illustration and color palette soft, it still feels elevated.

Coastal wedding invitation with a custom shell-shaped RSVP card in soft blue and white

This is something I encourage my own stationery clients to think about when we’re designing their suites. You don’t necessarily need more pieces or embellishments to make an invitation interesting. Sometimes changing the shape, scale, paper, printing method or orientation of a piece can completely transform the experience.

Those unexpected moments are what make someone want to keep exploring the suite as they open it.

And yes, I absolutely wanted people to open ours and think, Ohhhh, this is going to be a good wedding.

Texture Was Just as Important as Color

One of the biggest design threads throughout our wedding wasn’t actually a graphic element at all.

It was texture.

The stationery was photographed against chunky woven fibers and styled with soft blue ribbon, hydrangeas and blue velvet details. Even in the flat lays, you can immediately see the contrast between crisp paper, soft textiles, and natural woven materials.

Full custom coastal wedding stationery suite with venue illustrations, shell RSVP and blue envelopes

Coastal Rhode Island Wedding in a courtyard with hydrangea baskets and florals

Coastal wedding welcome table with wicker basket and frames

That same combination continued into the wedding itself.

We incorporated wicker textures, velvet, floral linens, soft textiles and layers of blue throughout the decor. None of those things are screaming “coastal theme” individually, but together they create exactly the relaxed, collected New England feeling I wanted.

The wicker chargers brought in that natural woven texture. The blues moved from the invitation suite onto the tables. Florals softened everything. Velvet added just enough richness to keep the design from feeling overly casual.

Coastal wedding tablescape with wicker chargers and blue and white decor

This is also why I think starting your wedding design with the stationery can be so helpful.

You’re essentially creating a mini mood board for your wedding.

Once you’ve established your colors, typography, illustration style, materials and overall mood, you have something to reference when you’re choosing linens, florals, signage, rentals, table settings and all of the other tiny details that come later.

It doesn’t mean everything has to match.

Actually, I’d argue that it shouldn’t.

Cohesive is not the same thing as identical.

The Tiny Details Were Some of My Favorites

Of course, being a stationer meant I was never going to stop at the invitation itself.

The vintage postage was one of those tiny details that probably didn’t need as much consideration as I gave it…but this is who I am as a person.

We incorporated postage that tied back to both Rhode Island and Virginia, along with stamps that coordinated with the colors and overall personality of the suite. It was another opportunity to make the envelope itself feel like part of the design rather than simply the thing holding all the good stuff together.

Custom wedding invitation envelope with curated vintage Rhode Island and Virginia postage

Our blue-and-white paper details continued throughout the wedding day, from menus and signage to the little personalized touches tucked into the celebration.

One of my favorite examples is our custom matchbook, nestled among the white flowers. It’s tiny. It’s certainly not something every guest would consciously connect back to the invitation suite. But that’s kind of the point.

Personalized blue and white wedding matchbook surrounded by white flowers

Good event design isn’t necessarily about guests being able to identify every connection.

It’s about everything feeling like it belongs in the same world.

Your Wedding Theme Shouldn’t Stop at the Paper

I talk all the time about wedding invitations setting the tone for the celebration, but designing my own made me appreciate that concept in an entirely different way.

Your stationery is one of the first tangible pieces of your wedding that guests experience. Before they see the flowers, sit at the tables, walk into the venue or order a cocktail, they open an envelope.

That’s an incredible opportunity.

For us, the invitation introduced the soft blues, architectural illustrations, coastal references, typography and layered feeling that our guests would eventually experience in Rhode Island.

Then we kept telling that story.

The wicker didn’t need a seashell attached to it to feel coastal. The floral linens didn’t need to perfectly match a pattern from the invitation. The velvet didn’t have to appear inside the stationery suite.

They just needed to feel like they belonged together.

And I think that’s where couples sometimes get hung up when they’re trying to create a “theme” for their wedding. A theme isn’t necessarily a collection of matching graphics.

It’s a point of view.

“Rhode Island summer” became ours.

From the Mailbox to Narragansett

There was something incredibly sentimental about finally getting to create my own wedding stationery after spending so many years doing it for other couples.

I know exactly how much thought goes into these pieces. I know how many decisions are hidden inside something that, at first glance, might simply look like a beautiful invitation.

The paper. The printing. The typography. The shape. The illustration. The postage. The envelope. The way one piece overlaps another. The feeling you get when you pull everything out for the first time.

I care about all of those details for my clients.

Getting to care about them for us was pretty special.

Blue and white custom wedding stationery styled with hydrangeas and a blue velvet ring box

Our Rhode Island wedding invitations weren’t designed to follow a coastal wedding trend or check off a list of things you’re “supposed” to include when you get married near the water.

They were designed to feel like us, in that place, on that day.

And ultimately, that’s what I think truly custom wedding stationery should do.

It should give your guests a glimpse into the celebration you’re creating—but it should also leave you with something that still feels deeply personal long after the wedding is over.

Planning a Wedding That Doesn’t Quite Fit Inside a Template?

Good. Those are my favorite kind.

At Faye Street Stationery Studio, I create custom wedding stationery for couples who want their invitations to feel like an experience—from custom venue illustrations and unexpected shapes to specialty printing, curated paper and all those tiny details most people don’t notice, but you absolutely do.

If you’re dreaming up a wedding that deserves stationery just as intentional as the celebration itself, I’d love to hear about it!!

INQUIRE ABOUT CUSTOM WEDDING STATIONERY →