Honestly, we get it. After all the months you've spent deliberating wedding colours, persuading your cousin's ex-boyfriend's sister-slash-graphic-designer to create your wedding monogram and Facebook messaging all 300 of your wedding guests in order to track down their addresses, you just don't have anything left to give your wedding invitations. At this point, they just need to show up, look nice and leave you to pursue more enjoyable wedding pursuits like coming up with clever table names and picking out your cake topper. The truth is, in the glittering world of bridal gowns, banquet halls and Swarovski swaddled centrepieces, wedding invitations often take the backseat to their more glamorous counterparts. They're sort of like those guests seated at that infamous Far Away Table - your mother's yoga instructor, relatives you see every 10 years but still had to invite - present, but certainly not front and centre on the biggest day of your life.

There's hardly a better example of how wedding invitations are often overlooked than Kate Middleton and Prince William, whose super-detailed Royal Wedding extravaganza included English field maple trees brought into West Minster Abbey, a bouquet bursting with symbolic blooms (including "Sweet Williams") and reception tables named after meaningful locations to the couple. Their wedding invitations, however, looked sort of like business cards.

Wedding stationers were devastated. Afterall, wedding invitations are the first impression of your entire wedding! In response to such travesty, some of the world's most renown studios even released their own editions of the Royal invitation, proclaiming the importance of those little slips of paper tasked with revealing the treasured details of a bride's wedding day.

For some brides, however, invitations are the priority, and they set out in search of designs destined to live on on Pinterest boards and gilded frames. We think all brides should aspire to stationery greatness and for that reason we set out in search of hand-drawn illustrations, lavish calligraphy unseen since the Declaration of Independence and DIY masterpieces that make up wedding invitations that are truly one of a kind. Take note of these 50 inspiring stationers and their jaw-dropping work.