Chantal Hofmann Design

Chantal Hofmann Design's homepage never says where the studio actually is. There is no address under the contact form, no map, no city name anywhere in the main navigation. The one place it surfaces is the Impressum: Birkenweg 10, 5603 Staufen, a village in Aargau that Hofmann herself describes on her About page as sitting "mitten im Herzen des Aargaus," right in the heart of the canton. That single fact, tucked away where most visitors never click, is the most reliable thing on the site, and it sets the tone for the rest of this listing: this is a one-person practice, not a print shop with a storefront, and it reads that way in everything it does and does not tell you.

Hofmann designs wedding stationery start to finish: save-the-date cards, then the day-of set (place cards, menu cards, seating plans, tags for wedding favours), through to thank-you cards once the day is over. Every piece is bespoke. Her own wedding-stationery page states this outright, in a sentence that also explains why she publishes no price list: because each commission is an individual, hand-finished piece with a lot of manual work behind it, there are no flat per-piece prices. That one line tells a couple exactly what kind of relationship they are entering: quote-per-project work, not a catalogue with a rate card.

The process opens with a free conversation. Her terms state plainly that initial consultations cost nothing; anything beyond that first meeting is billed at CHF 280 an hour. Before that call even happens, her contact form already asks for a project description, a link to a Pinterest board and a budget figure, so a couple shows up to the consultation having already sketched the mood and the number they have in mind, rather than starting from a blank page. From there she puts together a custom quote, then several design proposals worked out together with the couple, covering material, style and the smaller details: ribbons, wax seals, personalised tags. Once a design is signed off, the finishing happens by hand in her own studio: edges torn to a deckled finish, ribbons tied, wax seals applied, rather than run through an outside production line.

What the site does not say is just as telling as what it does, and worth stating plainly rather than guessed at. It never names a print process for the wedding line: no letterpress, no foil stamping, no digital printing, nothing beyond "high-quality papers" and "selected typography." It never states a minimum order quantity. Given that every piece is described as an individual, hand-finished commission rather than a print run, a fixed minimum may simply not be how this studio prices work in the first place, but either way it is not published, so nobody should assume one applies. It never states a lead time from first brief to delivery either. A couple working to a hard deadline needs to raise that directly at the quote stage and get it in writing, because nothing on the site sets an expectation either way.

One process detail does surface, though not on the pretty wedding page: buried in the terms and conditions, every order gets a PDF proof for written sign-off before anything goes to print, and once that sign-off is given, responsibility for catching errors moves to the couple. The same terms spell out what happens if a reprint is needed after that point: it is billed to the client. That is the closest thing to a stated revision policy this listing found, and it is worth knowing before a proof lands in your inbox rather than after.

What the small print settles that the wedding page won't

Hofmann's terms and conditions, filed well past the romantic copy on the rest of the site, answer several questions the wedding page leaves open. Invoices are due within 30 days of the invoice date; miss that window and a flat CHF 50 late fee applies on top of any collection costs. Every price on the site is stated in Swiss francs, with no other currency mentioned anywhere, which matters to anyone paying from abroad and doing their own conversion. Shipping runs through Swiss Post only, at CHF 5 for a standard letter or CHF 30 for a priority parcel; nothing in the terms addresses shipping outside Switzerland, so a couple planning to have finished pieces mailed home should ask directly rather than assume it is covered. Custom-made goods carry no right of return under the terms, transport damage has to be reported within 3 days of arrival, and a colour variation or a size difference of 1-2mm is explicitly not treated as a defect. That last line is a reasonable one for hand-finished paper goods, but it is worth reading before you sign off on a proof, not after a box arrives.

A small ready-made shelf next to the bespoke one

The shop tab is the one place on the entire site that names an actual finishing technique. Among its small selection of postcards and greeting cards, all designed by Hofmann herself, one listed item is a Christmas card described as embossed, on a white envelope with gold shimmer, priced at CHF 6. It has nothing to do with weddings, and it will not tell you what technique goes into a save-the-date, but it is the only concrete evidence on the site that embossing is a process she actually works in. The portfolio tab, by contrast, shows real work with none of that detail: a September styled shoot, a shoot at Lake Wartensee, a bridal editorial shot in Berlin, presented purely as photography, with no captions naming paper stock, print method or colour.

The entire site runs in German: the navigation, the wedding-stationery page, the terms, and every field on the contact form. There is no English toggle anywhere. Nothing on the site rules out working in English, and nothing confirms it either, so a couple reading this listing in English should treat that as the first thing to settle on the free introductory call, not an assumption to carry through to the quote.

What this listing can vouch for is the process: a named designer doing genuinely bespoke work and finishing it by hand, ribbon by ribbon and seal by seal, with a free first conversation and a real, individual quote before anyone commits to anything. What it cannot vouch for is everything a couple comparing several studios would normally want up front: a minimum order, a lead time, a named print process for the wedding line itself, or any confirmation that the process can run in English. None of that means the work is anything less than what the photography suggests. It means the free consultation is carrying more of the load here than it would with a studio that publishes its terms in full, and it is worth using that first call for exactly that, before any deposit changes hands.