Wedding invitations that look like rock concert posters

Like many brides and bridegrooms, Katie Mercurio and Jeremy Geddis had specific ideas about their wedding.

No pink. Lots of lavender. Traditional Seattle food and ingredients.

And rock-poster invitations.

For that, they turned to Seattle-based designer Matt Terich, who with his wife, Tere Mendez, makes wedding-poster invitations, on top of his poster work for bands and his day job as a user-interface designer for a startup company.

"As soon as I saw it, I was like totally, we're doing this," said Geddis, an avid poster collector. His fiancée had seen Terich's information online at his Poster Bride site, and the process afterward was simple.

The couple met with Terich once, Geddis said, and then he sent them different versions via e-mail. Within a few months, they saw the end result.

"My husband kind of had a feeling of what we wanted, but Matt did a really good job of translating the feeling of our relationship and the way that we wanted the wedding to be — kind of elegant, natural and not pretentious, and also something special."

Other designers and printers shy away from the wedding business, Terich said, because emotions can run high and personal tastes may be tricky to satisfy.

Fortunately, Terich found the majority of his clients to be more easygoing than he'd expected.

"I tend to find that someone who's willing to go out on a limb and get an invitation that's not traditional is going to be pretty laid-back," he said.

Terich got the idea for his quirky side business in 2005, at a poster convention. A couple approached him, wanting to know if he'd be interested in making their invitations. The designer agreed. He's gone on to make eight or nine posters for weddings, and that's without promoting the side business.

The invitations are more like event posters than traditional wedding invitations, describing the date and location of the wedding as if it were a long-anticipated concert. The posters can come in a variety of sizes, up to 19 by 25 inches, depending on the client's need, Terich said.

So far, the most difficult part of the job has been explaining to people why they can't just buy one poster (with the cost of printing and supplies, clients must buy a minimum of 50), but Terich loves making wedding posters because the clients are often more enthusiastic than musicians.

"It's a way to do [something] for somebody where they ... get to be the rock star for that event — because they are, and that's what a wedding is."

Geddis and Mercurio were married in May, and they still keep their rock-poster invitation hanging over their bed. They didn't count on making such a hit with their families and friends.

"They thought it was the coolest thing they'd ever seen," Geddis said. "Open it up and it's a really cool poster. ... A lot of our friends and our relatives have even kept them and left them up in their homes."

Arla Shephard: 206-515-5632

or ashephard@seattletimes.com