A Surprise Wedding

Inviting guests to a 'surprise' wedding by using clever typography and decoder glasses earned me an international award for excellence in print from Under Consideration.

As a wedding invitation designer and letterpress printer, I cheated myself out of the best possible job opportunity when my (now husband) and I decided to throw a surprise wedding at our daughter's 2nd birthday. Then I got thinking... maybe I could create invitations to the birthday that hid some kind of secret message. I spent months poring over a design that existed on two separate levels: a little girl's birthday invitation that, when viewed through 3D decoder glasses, became a wedding invitation. The design had to be really tight so that we felt confident to send it to our friends and family without worrying that they would see the hidden message. And guess what? It worked! Until they arrived at the birthday party and put those 3D glasses on, they never saw it coming.