I gave myself a couple hours to redesign the Jeff Bezos Wedding Invitation
Everyone on the internet has been talking about Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s wedding in Venice last weekend. And the online art community has been talking about the leaked wedding invitation design. You can easily google it if you haven’t seen it yet.
I don’t know what the entire invitaiton suite looked like, because we only have that one card.
And I don’t know who designed it.
But I do know that every designer has their own style.
For example, my design style is romantic and floral, with a touch of vintage details, like in the images below. I also often draw pets or animals, similar to how the invitation from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez included butterflies and doves. So I thought to myself, “Hmm I wonder how I would have designed this invitation. Let me give myself a couple hours to see what I come up with.”
Before I show you my redesign, here’s a quick piece of important context: My custom stationery clients choose either Custom Art or Vintage Art. Custom art is handdrawn by me as the artist, and vintage art is sourced from various public domain archives. Depending on the wedding aesthetic and budget, either custom or vintage will be the better fit. Here are some examples of vintage (left) and custom (right):
Left: Vintage art for envelope liners, showing Piazza Navona in Rome; Right: handdrawn custom art by me showing the Florence skyline for a vellum wrap';
So let’s imagine Jeff Bezos asked me to design wedding invitations with Vintage Art…
Vintage art is perfect for a wedding in Venice. Think about all of the history, the fine art, and the detailed architecture throughout the city. Vintage art will give that classic, timeless, and old world feel.
(And also, let’s be honest… Vintage art is way faster, and I’m not trying to create a bunch of free custom art for a blog post about a fake redesign of these invitations! I limited myself to just a couple hours for the whole redesign so vintage art made a lot more sense.)
The Design Process:
Sourcing and Arranging Artwork:
I wanted to find images with the same subject matter as the original Jeff Bezos wedding invitation, such as butterflies, stars, and doves. And I wanted to choose artwork in a similar style so they would look cohesive. I used the MET Open Access archive to source the artwork. (PSA to designers and artists: this is such an incredible resource!)
Here are some of the public domain images I sourced:
Then I rearranged them into a design for the card. Here’s a timelapse video showing that part of the process:
After that, I added the text and ended up with the design below:
A possible redesign of the Jeff Bezos wedding invitation using vintage details for an old world vintage Venice aesthetic. This version still includes butterflies, doves, feathers, and stars.
Designing an envelope liner to show off Venice
But I still needed a nod to the venue and location in Venice, so here are some more public domain images I sourced from MET Open Access:
Let’s see what they all look like as envelope liners. Which is your favorite?
Options for an envelope liner showing gondolas, architecture, and the skyline of Venice
The final design
Below is my favorite envelope liner along with the redesign of the card:
How does it compare to the original?
Maybe it’s just a different style. It’s vintage and old world.
The thing to remember when designing your invitations or when hiring a stationer is to look at their style and make sure it matches the aesthetic you want.
Maybe the original invitation is exactly what Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez wanted. Who knows!
But for me, I would have designed it this way.
How would you design it?
