Meet Dominique Wilbur

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dominique Wilbur.

Hi Dominique, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself. 
We are Dominique and Natalia, two sisters with a passion for creativity. We were born and raised in Blairstown, a little farm town in northern New Jersey. Growing up, we were surrounded by so much love and support for us to become kind humans and to become the best versions of ourselves. As soon as we were able to hold a pencil or crayon as little kids, we would sit at the kitchen table and spend hours creating. It was our happy place then and still is today. The roots of this creative journey started as those two little girls who found joy making something beautiful out of nothing – sitting at the kitchen table creating, baking with our mom, collecting sea glass and shells on the Jersey shore, or spending time outdoors in the vegetable garden we proudly planted each year. 

At the ages of eight and nine, we 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, NJ. This became an annual tradition and began to grow and expand as our way to serve others. Flash forward to today all those years later, we are still at the core those two hearts who love to create. We are proud to create beautiful + timeless stationery, calligraphy, and art and to continue to serve those in need. We do so by donating a portion of our sales to The Fisher House Foundation. 

Outside of Thoughtfully Yours, we both have pursued careers in service, Dominique living in North Carolina as active-duty Army, serving in the 82nd airborne, and Natalia living in New Jersey as a Registered Nurse. Both our jobs outside of our business and the distance between us has truly challenged us and allowed beautiful growth for us to curate collections for all of our clients. 

Our design style is classic and elegant yet fresh, tying in beautiful colors with vintage-inspired art to create heirloom quality, fine art collections. Stationery and calligraphy is truly an art in itself! We special in stationery – from wedding and special event invitation suites, to day of stationery to hand calligraphy cards, to bespoke calligraphy art. We also offer engraving hand calligraphy services, create our art designs on limited collections such as Christmas ornaments, painted taper candles, and framed art, and host calligraphy workshops. We love partnering with other small businesses and support local as much as we can. We especially love working with local vendors for weddings and events, such as our mom in NJ, who has a beautiful rental boutique, Heartfelt Rentals. It’s so special all these years later as adults for us to see her build her dream business and partner with ours. 

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There are always ups and downs, especially in business. The creative side has always come effortless 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 studied marketing at Lehigh University and received and incredible education, and dove 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. 

In addition, with Dominique’s job taking her to North Carolina it’s opened so many amazing opportunities and has been one of the best things to grow our business but the distance between us with Natalia staying in New Jersey has taught us how to balance our different roles and who takes on a new client. 

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
We find beauty in the power of words, creating bespoke calligraphy. We curate elegant, classic, and timeless luxury collections to celebrate all of life’s special moments. We do so through stationery (on paper) and engraving services (on glass and metal). 

All of the art and calligraphy is designed by hand in the old-fashioned way, using calligraphy ink and nibs, paint and brushes, pencils, and other mediums. 

We specialize in wedding and special event invitations, day of stationery, and custom calligraphy and engraving services. We also host in-person calligraphy workshops where we share the art of calligraphy. 

We are most proud of our creative process; every design is original and created by us with so much love and thought. We strive to create the highest quality art on the highest quality materials that are made in the USA. It’s so important for us as a small business to not only support our own but other USA small businesses. 

Especially for our wedding invitation suite collections, what makes us unique is our original art and calligraphy. We have our own signature style of calligraphy that is unlike any other font. We take how our client’s vision for their event, from the colors, to how they want their guests to feel, and convert that into our designs on paper. We are provide a luxurious service that brings ease to our clients- from initial inquiry to receiving their initial design board and packages, to final proofing, to printing, white glove assembly, and mailing out their invitations directly to their guests – that allows them to truly enjoy the special moments in life. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
We don’t necessarily believe in luck, but that God guides us on paths in life where all things happen for a reason, even if we don’t understand that reason. 

When we got out of college, and Dominique was beginning her job in the military, we didn’t think our business would survive, or we would have the time to do so. Then, we weren’t an official business and used a different name, offering calligraphy and painted stationery and decor. 

But after months of slowing down, we realized something was missing. Just at that time, Dominique and her husband moved to Pinehurst, NC, for the military. Soon later, we had amazing opportunities open with a few local businesses that began to sell our products in stores. We continued to be welcomed arms wide open by other creatives, small businesses, and leaders in the wedding industry who were willing to take a chance on us. It brought so much joy to us and made us realize this is what we need to do and keep doing all we can to grow and strengthen our business. 

Contact Info:

• Website: Thoughtfullyyours.co (soon to be thoughtfullyyoursdesign.com)
• Instagram: Thoughtfullyours.co (soon to be thoughtfullyyoursdesign)
• Facebook: Thoughtfully Yours LLC

Image Credits
Jennifer B Photography