Yesterday I caught up with the talented Nikki Stock from Francis Dee, to find out a little more about her amazing business Francis Dee Wedding Stationary.

Enjoy!

How did Franics-Dee Bespoke Wedding Stationery start?

The Francis-Dee brand has been around for a long time. I came up with the name along time ago. I named the company after my Nan and My Mum – two of my biggest inspirations.  I trained as Textile Designer and have worked as both a textile and graphic designer for many years. Before I decided to go Freelance two years ago I was working as an Art Director for a prominent design studio. With my history as you can imagine I was always the one family and friends and then friends of friends! Came to when they needed funky invites or Greetings Cards!!!!!! So I had been taking private orders for a while.

Francis-Dee really got properly underway when I was getting married. While planning my wedding I met other like minded creative people including Juliet from Fancy Nancy. Juliet needed some Vintage style Prints for a new patchwork wedding cake she was designing and we worked together on this venture. Juliet produced an amazing cake; it’s most definitely worth a look. The cake looked so beautiful that it inspired me to produce wedding Stationery to compliment it. I was also designing my own wedding Stationery at the time and loving every minute of it, So that is how Francis-Dee was born and my company has really grown from there.  I have had such great feedback and interest in my Stationery which means I can now immerse myself in weddings all year through!

Tell me the inspiration behind your designs?

I take inspiration from many places, as a designer you never switch off, everything you see and read you find yourself wondering how I could make that work! With my vintage Floral Range my main focus was obviously Vintage look textile prints but i worked back with polka dots to make it more modern and to give it a twist therefore making it more desirable to today’s brides.  I always like to take inspiration from something unusual I see when I least expect it. I’m a nightmare when I go on holiday I drive my husband mad. I buy loads of random stuff to inspire me and then I get stuck with excess baggage!!!!

What do you feel is unique about your stationery?

I think there are a few unique factors in Francis-Dee. Everything we make is handmade in our Leigh-on-Sea studio. Being a textile designer you are always going to get a wonderful print that you can not get anywhere else. We can even design a print especially for you! We cater for your entire stationery & wedding favour needs; if you want it we will find a way to get it for you. We will translate your theme throughout your wedding tastefully and effortlessly through from the moment the save the date falls on your guests door mats until your perfect day sadly comes to an end…. We have very close links with an amazing cake designer who we can work closely with to make sure your chosen wedding theme translates to your wedding Cake also. We can even have the print you have chosen printed on to silk for you to use where ever you like in your wedding for example the sashes on your chair cover – wrapped around the bottom of your bouquet! There are lots of possibilities!

How much dose your vintage floral range cost?

Our prices do vary a great deal depending on numbers and invitation style. As we hand make our invitations our prices do reflect this.

Invitations start from £5.00 each and R.S.V.P’s start from £1.00 each and save the dates start from £2.50 each. We can offer discounts on these prices if you order more than 80 of each from us. Please email us for more information. A more precise price list is available on our website Francis Dee.

We can tailor make anything you desire all you have to do is ask. Obviously this can take more of our time up, so we do charge a bit extra for this service. Please give us a call to discuss your ideas or just drop us an email. Hope all of this helps a bit but the best thing to do to get a quote from us as every wedding is different!

Vintage is still big this year, what new emerging trends do you envisage for the forthcoming season?

One thing I have learnt from my years in the fashion world is you need to be versatile and ready to change your style at a moments notice and keep on top of the trends. So I am always thinking about what is next!  I think there is still a lot of millage left in the Vintage theme but I think it will start to take a new turn. Maybe using Birds or Butterfly’s in a more graphic way but against obviously vintage grounds. I think you will start to see more of a play on colours Brown is still very big and I think you are going to see more pop colours being used against it like lime greens and turquoises. Another theme which I have noticed starting to emerge is the Indian summer lots of cerise and orange with maybe a bit of brown or Cream to calm it down. And of course you will always have the white on white/ classic romantic so it’s important to find a way to make this as special and unusual!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Wedding Stationary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.