The hobby that got out of hand.

A pen and a kitchen table

Mom, Micki to everyone who knew the store, took up calligraphy in a corner of our kitchen in Walnut Creek. She lettered a birth announcement for a friend, the friend showed it around and the phone started ringing. She called the business Calligraphy Corner, because that's exactly what it was.

The hobby outgrows the house

The orders kept coming, so Dad left his career in banking and together they opened a storefront in downtown Walnut Creek. Micki ran the craft. Dad grew the business, taking it from birth announcements into weddings and building a network of sales reps and vendor partners across the western U.S. For the next two decades couples sat at the table, paged through albums and picked the invitation that felt like them. Somewhere along the way, Micki became the town's unofficial wedding etiquette hotline.

A new name

By then the work had grown well past calligraphy: invitations, announcements and personalized stationery for every occasion life could throw a party for. After 23 years the name finally caught up with the business. Calligraphy Corner became Inviting Ways.

Full circle

After 22 years downtown, my parents brought the business back home, right where it started. I kept it going for a few years after they stepped back. Then life moved on, the way it does.

Reborn for the AI age

A wedding still begins with an invitation. But now there's also a website your guests will visit a dozen times before the big day, and most of them look like a form with your names typed in. We thought that deserved better.

So Inviting Ways is back, second generation. We take the stationery you love and carry its design all the way through your wedding website. And our design agent is named Michelle, after Mom. That's her real name, though around here she'll always be Micki.