Author Archives: ByHand Invitations

About ByHand Invitations

ByHand Invitations was started in 2004 by award-winning ABC News television broadcast designer Steve Bottorff designing wedding invitations for Washington, DC couples. Our reach has expanded to include clients from Africa and Europe!

A New Bat Mitzvah Invite

Lucy Rose LaRue Schwartz. You gotta love this girls name! It’s playful cadence inspired us to use a hand drawn flowers theme for her upcoming Bat Mitzvah.  



Washingtonian Bride and Groom

We are pleased as punch to be on Washingtonian Bride and Groom’s best wedding vendor list again for the third year running!


A Special Offer for spring brides!

Have us design your Save the Dates in January or February and receive 10% off your custom designed wedding invitations!


A very fun invite indeed! Thanks for the shout out

New Orleans Bachelorette Party


We Travel to Germany, San Francisco and Vegas to Play Poker

Two fall destination weddings and a chance to win $50,000!

We would love to jump aboard and fly off to San Francisco and Mittenwald, Germany. We can dream can’t we?

Kara and Ryan’s favorite place to vacation is in Mittenwald, famous for its violin making. With it’s majestic mountain scenery and quaint painted Bavarian houses, they planned the ultimate getaway for family and friends. They wanted to feature the mountains on the invitation and made sure that their beloved dog Chance was included as well.

Lauren and Geoffrey live in San Francisco and decided to marry by the Golden Gate Bridge at nearby Baker Beach. We never did personally meet the lovely couple, but the bride entrusted her delightful, creative and crafty mom Kathy to oversee the invitation planning. Since there were many events leading up to the big day we agreed that a 4 part tiered invite tied together with navy ribbon fit the bill. We began by designing a special stamp which was prominently displayed on the invites and decorated the hotel welcome baskets and reception menus. Once assembled and be-ribboned, the invitations were placed in an over sized envelope with handmade wrapped address labels carefully crafted by Kathy.

Vegas Baby!

Seneca One Finance asked us to design an exclusive event invitation promoting a “Winner take all” poker game in Las Vegas. The challenge for us was to create an invitation that would stand out amongst the mountain of flyers flowing through the mailboxes of 2,000 potential clients. We suggested an over sized playing card printed on 2 sides announcing the event in bold “Texas Hold ‘Em” style typography with rounded corners. Imagine having a whole deck of these to play poker with!


Creative Mapping

Ahoy Mates!

Lea and Matt wanted a design to reflect their love for Bald Head Island in North Carolina. A sophisticated pirate theme evoking the storied past immediately came to mind. We set our sails and began researching vintage maps and engraved sea imagery. The roiling wave background of this invitation is printed and the foreground is letterpressed using vintage map elements and a rough script. One of our favorites of the summer season!


Continental Love

Sarah and Josh wanted a map to tell the circuitous story of their relationship. Sarah living in Canada and Josh in California, their paths finally joined in Washington, DC.  We used elementary school globe colors for the front and chose a fanciful compass rose to anchor the text on the back. Sarah wanted a cut circle invitation and chose bright yellow square envelopes to match the sash of her gown.


ByHand, Cape May Style!

A refreshing dip in the ocean is certainly what this beauty is prescribing. We are setting ourselves free for a couple of weeks and will be back to the design boards in August. We still want to hear from you. Our email is always open. We’ll get back to you when the sun goes down. Cheers!


Summer Wedding Invitations

We are pleased to add three more custom designs to our collection of summer wedding invitations.

Kelly and Fabiola were inspired and taken by our “spy couple” save the date and wanted something similar using the Washington DC monuments. They also requested that 2 love birds be included for which we designed a special logo for them to use throughout their wedding stationery.

Kelly and Fabiola Invite

Kelly and Fabiola RSVP

Kelly and Fabiola reception

Kelly and Fabiola accommodations card

If you have followed our posts this spring you will remember the save the date we designed for Sara and Todd. We love to play with typography and wanted to reflect the the save the date theme in the invitation suite. A bold navy and rich gold border frame the calligraphic-like text in a fanciful french manner. The suite was packaged together with a bellyband. Tres chic!

Sara and Todd invite

Sara and Todd RSVP

Sara and Todd reception

Sara and Todd Bellyband

Nature brings the beauty, you supply the love. This bride wanted a garden of lavender theme and attach lavender sprigs to her invitation. Unfortunately, the harvesting season is later than the wedding. The next best solution… her mother, a painter, provided a beautiful rendering of the lavender to feature on the invitation.

Anna and Joseph invite

Anna and Joseph RSVP

Anna and Joseph welcome card

Anna and Joseph Accommodations

Stay in touch for our next round of posts.Weddings from Bald Head Island, NC, Washington, DC and we reveal our “spy couple” invitation!


Now accepting Visa and Mastercard

We are now accepting the convenience of credit cards! A few of our clients have expressed interest in charging their custom invitations. We now have the technology to “swipe” or take your credit card number over the phone. How easy is that?