Thank you for visiting. Before anything else, a small confession: I make my living with a dip pen and a bottle of ink, and I resisted the Internet for as long as I decently could. But three brides this spring asked whether I had a page, and so here it is, typed on a computer with a certain amount of grumbling, and I have made my peace with it.

What I do is simple to describe. When your invitations are printed, you will have a box of envelopes that need addressing, and later a stack of place cards that need names, and perhaps a few other things: a menu, a guest book title page, the vows written out to frame. I letter them by hand, one at a time, at my desk by the north window, in ink that will not fade. It takes longer than a computer label and it costs more than a computer label. It also looks like someone cared, which is rather the point of a wedding.

Black ink is standard. Colored ink (sepia, navy, burgundy, deep green) or white ink on dark envelopes is 25¢ more per piece; gold or silver ink is 50¢ more, and I will tell you honestly that metallic ink on some papers is a trial. Bring me one envelope and let me try it before you decide. A minimum order is 25 pieces. Payment is half when you leave the envelopes with me and half when you pick them up, by check.

A calligrapher calls a style of lettering a "hand." I work in two, and I would rather do two well than eight indifferently. Since I cannot show you a picture here (the scanner is my husband's, it is at his office, and the one time I tried the letters came out looking like a fax), let me describe them.

Copperplate is the formal, flowing script most people picture when they hear the word "calligraphy": the writing on an old engraved invitation or a nineteenth-century letter. It takes its name from the engraved copper plates that printers once used to reproduce it. It is written with a pointed steel nib that flexes: press down and the two tines of the nib spread apart to make a thick stroke, ease up and they close to make a hairline. Every letter is built from those swelling downstrokes and whisper-thin upstrokes, all leaning at a steep and consistent slant, with round oval bodies and long, looping ascenders. The capitals are where the ornament goes, and they can be as restrained or as flourished as you like. It is slow work; a single envelope is about eight minutes. It is my first love, and it suits a formal evening wedding and a traditional engraved invitation better than anything.

Italic is older, cleaner and a little more modern-looking, which sounds like a contradiction until you see it. It descends from the chancery cursive of the scribes of Renaissance Italy, who needed a hand that was elegant and quick. It is written with a broad-edged nib, a flat chisel-tipped pen held at a constant angle, so the thicks and thins come not from pressure but from the direction of the stroke: a downstroke is broad, a sidestroke is thin, and the pen never presses at all. The letters are narrow and slightly compressed, built on an oval, with a gentle forward slant and the little branching arches that give the hand its rhythm. It is legible at a glance, which matters to a mail carrier, and it pairs beautifully with a simple printed invitation, an outdoor wedding, or a bride who says "nothing too fancy."

If you are undecided, bring me your invitation and a plain envelope and I will letter your own name and address in both. Most people know within about four seconds.

Until I win the argument about the scanner, here are three pieces from this year that I was especially happy with, described as well as I can.

A June wedding, 210 envelopes, copperplate in black on heavy ecru. The bride's invitation was engraved in a classic script, so I matched the slant and the weight of it and kept the capitals nearly plain, with only the first letter of each surname given a single small flourish that curled back under the name like a ribbon. The addresses were centered rather than set flush left, which takes a little planning on each envelope but makes the whole stack look like a set. Her grandmother, she told me afterward, kept her envelope.

An October wedding at an orchard, 140 place cards, italic in sepia ink on small cream cards with a deckled edge. The names were written in a fairly compressed italic with the capitals given a slight swash, and for each table she had chosen an apple variety instead of a number, so the cards said things like "Northern Spy" and "Winesap" in a smaller italic below the name. Brown ink on cream, with the deckle, looked like something out of an old seed catalog. I would do this wedding again for free.

A pair of vows, lettered for framing, copperplate in navy on a single sheet of watercolor paper. His on the left, hers on the right, each about eighty words, with their two names in larger capitals at the top and the date and the church at the foot in a small italic. The difficulty in a piece like this is spacing the lines so both halves finish at the same place on the page; I ruled the whole sheet in pencil and lettered it twice before I was satisfied. Their first anniversary is in November and I understand it will be a surprise, so I will say no more.

The single greatest kindness you can do me, and yourself, is a clean list. Please:

• Type it. A word processor file by e-mail is ideal; a typed sheet by mail is fine. Handwritten lists are the source of every misspelled name I have ever lettered, and I have lettered a few.
• One guest per block, laid out exactly as you want it to appear on the envelope, line for line. If you want "Doctor and Mrs. Thomas Lindgren" and not "Dr. & Mrs. T. Lindgren," write it that way. I letter what you send, spelled as you send it. Proofread it, then have your mother proofread it.
• Full addresses with ZIP codes. No abbreviations unless you want them lettered: "Street," not "St."; "Minnesota," not "MN." State names spelled out look far handsomer on an envelope, and the post office reads them perfectly well.
• Inner envelope names on the same block, marked so, if you are having inner envelopes.
• Send me 15 to 20 percent more envelopes than names. Some will be spoiled (I am human; the ink is not always cooperative), and you will add guests. You always add guests. Extra unused envelopes come back to you.
• Numbering: if you would like a tiny number penciled on the back flap to match your list, say so; it makes the response cards easier to track.

E-mail the list to [email protected] and drop the envelopes at the house, or mail them to me; I will send you the address when we have spoken. I look at every list the day it arrives and I will write back with any questions before I uncap a pen.

My usual turnaround is two weeks from the day I have both your envelopes and your final list. A very large order, or a busy month, may take three, and I will tell you so before I take it. Rush work in under a week, when I can do it at all, is half again the price, because it means another bride's envelopes wait.

Invitations should go out six to eight weeks before the wedding, so count backward: if you are marrying on the third Saturday in June, I should have your envelopes by mid-April at the latest. The place cards can come much later; I need them about ten days before the wedding, once the responses are in.

Please book early for June. I take only so many weddings a month, and June of 2000 is already half full as I write this in September. May and September are close behind. If your date is next summer and you would like me, write to me now; there is no charge to hold a place on my calendar, and no obligation until the envelopes arrive.

I learned italic first, at fourteen, from a library book and a fountain pen with a broad nib that my grandfather brought back from Norway, and I learned copperplate much later and much more slowly from a teacher who made me fill a hundred pages with nothing but ovals before she would let me write a letter. I have been lettering for other people for eleven years, and full time, from a studio that is honestly the front bedroom of our house, since 1995. I belong to our regional calligraphers' guild and still take a workshop whenever I can, because there is always someone better, and that is a comfort.

I work alone. When you write to me, it is I who answer; when your envelopes are lettered, it is my hand that lettered every one. My husband occasionally carries boxes. That is the whole staff.

To reach me: [email protected], or (555) 555-0163, afternoons, please, as mornings are when the light is best and the pen is out. I am glad to meet at the house, by appointment, or at the coffee shop on the square if that is easier; bring your invitation and one envelope and we will start there.