Check Out Dominique Wilbur’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dominique Wilbur

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
The roots of our creative journey started as little girls who found joy making something beautiful out of nothing – sitting at the kitchen table creating, baking with our mom, or spending time outdoors in the vegetable garden we proudly planted each year. At the ages of eight and nine, my sister Natalia and I hosted our first little sale of handmade greeting cards and jewelry to benefit charity outside of our family’s annual vacation rental in Long Beach Island, New Jersey. This became an annual tradition and began to grow and expand as our way to serve others. This evolved to having a little shelf with handmade items in a local gift shop through middle school and high school.

We both went off to college and I commissioned into the Army after receiving a degree in Marketing at Lehigh University. Flash forward to today, all those years later, still at the core of those two hearts who love to create, officially starting Thoughtfully Yours in 2022 amidst my service and after leaving the military in the fall of 2024, took on Thoughtfully Yours full time. Thoughtfully Yours is rooted in intentional storytelling, celebrating weddings and life’s special moments on paper through fine art stationery with original calligraphy and art. It’s been a joyous yet challenging journey and the desire to create has always been a part of me, clearly guiding me to evolve and make the decision to take Thoughtfully Yours full time.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not always been a smooth road, I believe the challenges and adversity are what makes us stronger. My unique background of trying different creative products and ideas through Natalia and I’s creative business over the years while balancing being a student and serving allowed Thoughtfully Yours to blossom into what it is today. Balancing how and when to grow, building a digital presence and credibility as a new business, especially in the wedding industry, was challenging for us at first.
Then, there are operations as a business itself. The creative side has always come effortlessly to us, but the side that no one talks about – the behind-the-scenes of bookkeeping, legal documents, and systems, taxes, etc. is something that we continue to learn by trial and error. I went to business school and received an incredible education, diving into entrepreneurial studies, but you truly don’t know all the intricacies of how to start and run a small business until you are doing it yourself. We are constantly learning along the way.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
At Thoughtfully Yours, we believe in the beauty and power of words. We believe a handwritten note can make someone’s day. We believe we should celebrate and capture all of life’s special moments. We curate classic, timeless, and elegant collections for you to remember those moments, transforming the aesthetic, vision, and feeling of the intangibles of our client’s celebrations onto paper. We do so through our stationery, calligraphy, and art. We specialize in wedding and special event fine art invitations, day-of stationery, and custom calligraphy and engraving services. We also provide education to other stationers, photographers, and creatives, providing online resources and hosting in-person workshops where we share the art of calligraphy and flatlay design.
We draw inspiration for our designs from nature, history, and vintage art and books. We have a love for romantic details and elegant textures that bring understated sophistication to our designs. Details like silk ribbon, hand poured wax seals, handmade and double thick paper, or printing methods like letterpress, foil press, and embossing. We pride ourselves in designing by hand all of the art and calligraphy in our studio – on paper, using calligraphy ink and nib, pen, pencil, or watercolor and acrylic paint.

Through our wedding services we offer a truly cohesive and seamless experience for our clients, from designing their stationery, to printing, assembling, and mailing their invitations, we provide a joyous and stress-free experience so they can spend more time enjoying life’s precious moments rather than worrying about things like how much postage to place on an envelope or what proper etiquette is for guest addressing. By working with us, our clients are investing in luxurious, fine art, curated stationery and art – creating an unparalleled first impression for their guests and providing a seamless and cohesive aesthetic that carries on from their invitation suite through their wedding day, an heirloom to be treasured for generations.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
For the wedding industry as a whole and specifically within stationery and design, I see it continuing to go into the direction of intentionality – couples celebrating their wedding without social limitations but in a way that truly expresses their unique love story. I think we will see more of a hybrid of large weddings and celebrations while also intimate gatherings and small celebrations. For stationery, I believe it will play a growing importance of creating something truly unique for the couple in such a digital and commercial world.

Pricing:

• THE AVERAGE THOUGHTFULLY YOURS COUPLE SPENDS $2,800-$8,500 TO DESIGN THEIR DREAM WEDDING INVITATION SUITE
• Day-of Stationery budget should be usually around invitation suite budget, it is something people often forget about or neglect to budget for!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thoughtfullyyoursdesign.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thoughtfullyyoursdesign/
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/thoughtfullyyoursdesign/