After designing her own wedding invitations in 2016, Patricia Okrasinski Heffner left behind a career in software engineering and founded Oh Eleven Studio (playing off the “O” and “H” in her name), a company specializing in bespoke wedding stationery.
The business that began in Rosslyn has since migrated—along with its proprietor—to a home studio in Alexandria, where a letterpress machine is surrounded by stacks of fine paper samples, imported inks and custom pen nibs. Heffner does most of her calligraphy by hand, and her finished pieces often have a tactile quality, with embossed lettering and homespun touches such as wax seals, thick brushstrokes, ribbon and tassels.
For one couple, “I created a Chinoiserie pattern of special places in the D.C. area,” she says. Another stationery design celebrated a pair’s Maryland roots with line sketches of crabs and hammers, and the Natty Boh beer and Utz potato chip icons reimagined as a bride and groom.
Heffner works closely with clients and wedding planners to translate each couple’s story into a visual language that extends to save-the-dates, invitations and wedding-day pieces such as menus and place cards. Her services range from $2,500 for invitations to $10,000 for full stationery packages.
Ingenuity is included, as seen in one recent design incorporating industrial, factory-style lettering on recycled cotton paper. Heffner gave the paper a mottled texture by pressing walnut shells into the surface—one of her many tricks of the trade.
“My favorite thing is just creating things that are of meaning to the people getting married,” she says. In a style “that feels like them.”