About Us
WELCOME TO PAPER AND STAIN, YOUR WEDDING STATIONERY EXPERTS!
At Paper and Stain, we specialize in creating beautiful and personalised wedding and event stationery that reflects your unique style and vision. Our portfolio showcases a variety of designs, from elegant invitations to charming save-the-dates. We believe every detail matters, and it's our mission to bring your ideas to life on paper.
Meet Melissa
Paper & Stain actually started long before Paper & Stain had a name.
In 2011, while in my third year of studying Event Management, I was looking for a way to make a little extra income. I thought I hadn’t been hired for the holiday job I’d applied for as part of the Snow Crew at one of our local Cape Town shopping malls (plot twist: I had, in fact, been hired — I just didn’t know it yet). So, naturally, I came up with a business name and started advertising stationery on Gumtree. Gumtree.
Yes, really. What a time.
And that little side hustle was the beginning of Pretty in Stains.
The stationery enquiries slowly turned into wedding enquiries, and before long, wedding planning had become a much bigger part of the business. Around 2014/2015, Samantha joined me and completely ran with the wedding planning side, while also bringing florals into our repertoire. Pretty in Stains grew into something much bigger than the stationery business I had originally imagined.
In 2016, I left to pursue a career in the hospitality industry, working across some of Cape Town’s most beautiful venues as a Venue, Weddings and Events Manager. Those years gave me an incredible education in weddings from the other side of the table — along with a whole lot of experience in leadership, logistics, luxury hospitality and what it really takes to make an event work.
But I never quite stopped designing stationery.
For nearly ten years, it lived as a little side hustle alongside my “real” career. And then, at the beginning of 2026, I officially resigned and came back to Pretty in Stains full-time.
It was exciting. It was terrifying. And, if I’m honest, it still is a little bit of both.
After ten years of doing stationery in the margins of my life, I finally get to give it the time, attention and creative energy it deserves.
And so, Paper & Stain was born.
It has its own identity, its own little corner of the Pretty in Stains world, and a little more room to shine — but it is very much still part of the Stains clan.
At its heart, Paper & Stain is a return to where it all began for me: paper, weddings, design and making something beautiful from an idea.
Just with considerably better paper than I had access to on Gumtree in 2011.