Archivist hosts a Wedding

Archivist began as a family business, so when Madeleine (daughter of founders William and Sarah) got married this June, it only made sense for Archivist to get thoroughly involved.

You’d be forgiven for thinking a wedding is rather different from, say, building a trade show stand. But really, all you need is a great team, a bit of creative chaos, and several thousand cable ties. And if you’ve got a letterpress printer to hand… well, even better.

The whole thing took place on a cliff top on the Isle of Wight. The kind of location that makes you pause, breathe in, and immediately start worrying about wind speeds. If it had been windy, we’d have been looking at a full About Time situation, with the marquee cartwheeling off the edge. Thankfully, it was gloriously calm. The tent was strung with the same lights we use at trade fairs, and the tables were dotted with our match bottles—repurposed as vases and candle holders. A little bit of Archivist everywhere you looked.

When you make letterpress cards for a living, there’s a certain pressure when it comes to designing your own wedding invites. The whole suite—from save the dates to menus to orders of service—was printed in our letterpress studio. The design began with a vintage roller rink coaster from Maine (naturally). It had been pinned to a moodboard for years and finally had its moment. Shaped like a shell, it felt like the perfect nod to a wedding by the sea.

And because it wouldn’t be an Archivist event without a matchbox, the place cards doubled up as tiny personalised boxes. A practical keepsake—and, unintentionally, the ignition source for some impromptu fireworks lighting later that night. (We didn’t plan that. But we do approve.)

William managed to leave his collection of orange suits at home. Instead, a slightly more understated cream suit was sourced via eBay, breaking his long-held tradition of being the most vibrant thing in any room. His vintage Citroën also made the journey to the island—rattling its way up the steep hill to the church like a very determined tin can on wheels.

In classic Archivist fashion, we did what we always do: packed up a van. Sarah drove down to the Isle of Wight with a vehicle full of flowers from her garden. Buckets and buckets of them, which found their way into vases, jars, and wild displays that filled the church and tent.

The finishing touches came courtesy of Madeleine’s sister-in-law, a brilliant sign painter, who covered the site with hand-painted signs—from seating plans and cocktail menus to the rules of The Peg Game, a slightly strange (and mildly competitive) wedding tradition involving clothes pegs, stealth, and occasional sabotage.

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By the next morning, the chaos had mellowed into something gentler. All 100 guests ran into the sea with coffee in hand and plates of vegan sausage rolls. The best kind of post-wedding fog: slightly sunburnt, slightly hungover, and entirely delighted.

Archivist may just be a greeting card and matchbox manufacturer on paper—but at the heart of it, we’ve always been about moments. Sharing them, marking them, making a bit of magic out of the ordinary. This one just happened to include a tent, a clifftop, and a lot of dancing under fairy lights. We wouldn’t have had it any other way.