How to Find Unique Wedding Invitations and Design Your Own Wedding Stationary

What begins as a search for the perfect wedding invitation often ends in a compromise—but for the founder of E Stokes Creations, it sparked a complete career transformation. Frustrated by cookie-cutter templates and determined to create something personal for her own big day, she designed her own wedding stationery—and fell in love with the process. Fast forward to today, and she’s crafting heartfelt, one-of-a-kind invitations and live wedding paintings that capture not just the look of a couple’s love, but the feeling of it. In this interview, she shares how she balances creativity with boundaries, motherhood with entrepreneurship, and emotion with professionalism in one of the most charged industries out there.

I was inspired to enter the wedding industry back in 2018 when I actually got engaged and married myself and sought ways to set my wedding apart from my friends’ weddings. Specifically, something that had been important to me was trying to find wedding invitations that didn’t feel run of the mill. When I looked online, I found a lot of pretty options but I felt like I had seen many of those templates used when my friends had invited me to their weddings. I felt like I’d been there done that with everything I was seeing and at the end of the day everything I saw just felt so basic. So I decided to create my own wedding invitations because I really wanted my wedding invites to feel reflective of me and my husband rather than something mass produced. And I honestly really fell in love with the entire process! After my husband and I returned from our honeymoon, I didn’t want to end my time within the wedding industry and end the joy I had felt while creating my wedding stationery, so I decided to discuss with my husband the idea of starting my own business, and thus E Stokes Creations was born!

When I am in creative mode, whether for my wedding invitation clients or live wedding paintings, I am always so inspired by my clients themselves and their romance. I really try to get to know my clients in order to gain an understanding of how exactly they see themselves and the world and their relationship, and then I use those nuances to inspire how I bring their invites or wedding painting to life. My goal is to create art that is indicative of the couple themselves and is something they’ll be proud to have as a keepsake for a lifetime. I also get inspired by the emotion and connection between the couple as well. I love learning about their love story and using that to really amplify the romance within my work in an intentional way. For example, when I’m painting at a wedding, I try to find the moments of joy and connection between my couple in order to really capture that emotion. Oftentimes, I’ll even use my overwhelming joy for the couple to help fuel my creative process and amplify what I am creating and how I go about my painting process!

The average day for me revolves around balancing my home life and my business priorities. I keep my laptop and planner nearby nearly the entire day while I chase my toddler around our home and make sure to have plenty of coffee on hand to keep me fueled during the day. I have it set up that I am able to get work done while supervising my son’s play time or watch him color, and then we will spend some intentional one-on-one time together before he goes down for a nap. While he naps, I either exercise, get some more head-down work done that I can’t be distracted with, or if I really need it, I’ll snag a nap too. In the late afternoons I’ll chat with potential clients or current clients and get proofs out before my husband gets home and we enjoy family time as a unit. Weekends look a little bit different for me since those are the days that I often have a wedding painting to drive to or travel for and I’ll often be gone the majority of the day before being onsite at the wedding about 7 hours and cranking the painting out!

For me, authenticity is one of my top goals. So staying true to myself and my brand has to come first in order to have a successful business model. If I’m turning my back on myself or my values, I’m not succeeding. Simple as that. So for example, if I have a client that sends me someone else’s wedding invitations and tells me “make this but for me,” I’ll have an honest conversation with my client that while I can take inspiration from other sources, I’m not going to copy anything, and I’m also going to make it my own. If that client feels so strongly about someone else’s work, at the end of the day they should go work with the other artist and that’s okay! I also have some pretty strong boundaries regarding things like needing to be compensated fairly or making sure that I’m taking care of myself and my family and not working all night to get things done. So if a client struggles with the boundaries I have in place within my business, I’ve unfortunately had to let clients go because we just aren’t the right fit for one another. But the great thing is that I’ve only had to have those hard conversation a couple of times in the seven years I’ve been in business. Thankfully, I have been encouraged to use my creative eye to make something one-of-a-kind and beautiful for my clients and I’ve got a body of work to back up what I love to do! I’m so grateful to have incredible clients that have their own vision, but then love to hand the reins over to me in order to bring their dreams to life — and then some!

For aspiring entrepreneurs that are planning to enter into emotionally-charged industries, my big advice I would give is to remain true to yourself and try your best not to take things too personally. In an industry like with weddings, emotions can definitely run high and oftentimes, expectations run even higher! Learning to lead with empathy without losing yourself is crucial.

For example, I’ve definitely been caught up in high-stakes moments like when a couple’s vision clashes with a parent’s vision during a consultation call. In those moments, I need to run interference and help guide everyone onto the same page or at least get to a place of easing the tensions a bit. If a parent doesn’t love a design element or a couple decides to pivot the concept, it’s not a reflection on me or my work. It’s really not about me, but about helping the couple feel seen while creating art that is timeless and what the couple envisions. At the end of the day, it’s so important to not take things too personally, but to instead lead with compassion and integrity within your business.

Follow Elyse and find out more about her work at E Stokes Creations here.