Beautiful Custom Wedding Stationery is Within Reach with Banter & Charm

Lucky Charm

Banter & Charm creates beautiful wedding stationery tailored to your style

By Blake Miller   | Photo by Sarah Sage Photography

When Sarah Guse Brown was planning her wedding in 2008, she knew exactly what she wanted her invitations to look like. But when she began searching for a stationer who would allow her to customize everything from the fonts to the paper, she says she “could not find anyone to do it without it being out-of-this-world expensive.”

So, she took matters into her own hands. Without any experience in graphic design, she taught herself “a bunch of design programs” and created her own wedding stationery — and she ended up loving the design process.

It didn’t take long for friends and family to notice her work, and soon they were asking Brown to design their wedding invitations as well. The high interest inspired her to open an Etsy shop offering custom invitation suites. “It became this fun side gig,” she says. Eventually, Brown took the leap of faith to turn her side hustle into a full-time career, launching her full-service stationery business, Banter & Charm.

Now, most of the elements of Brown’s letterpress designs are bespoke. “My design process is a hybrid where I allow clients to be really involved in the creation of each aspect of the stationery, but I offer a foundation of options to start with,” she explains. Based in St. Joseph on the west side of the state, the mom of two works in tandem with her clients, who choose from 14 different layouts, a variety of fonts, paper types and weights, decorative elements like monograms, and embellishments such as wax seals and delicate silk ribbons.

“My process really allows couples to commission wedding invitations perfectly tailored to their style without an over-the-top, lengthy, complicated custom design process,” she says. “The invite is the first thing your guest receives. It sets the tone for your wedding. And I want to help couples achieve that with beautiful wedding stationery.”

To learn more visit banterandcharm.com