Transcription of Valerie Kyros for the show Maine Weddings #177
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you’re listening to Love Maine Radio:: Show #177 Maine Weddings, airing for the first time on Sunday, February 1, 2015. Hone to Valentine’s Day, February has become known as a month for lovers. With that in mind, Maine Magazine offers its wedding issue each time this year, featuring 26 real weddings and a wealth of information for those who are planning a special day in the Pine Tree state.
Today, we speak with Valerie Kyros, stationer and owner of Papier and Fleuriste in Portland, who has years of experience in the area of weddings. We also speak with Kate Seremeth, Maine Magazine art director, and Kelly Clinton, Maine Magazine managing editor about the enjoyment they have derived from bringing the wedding issue to life. Thank you for joining us.
Here on Love Maine Radio, we understand how important occasions can be and how important it is to celebrate life in whatever form that it takes. Our guest today, Valerie Kyros, also understands this. She is the owner of Papier and Fleuriste, a stationary store in Portland and an individual who helps people celebrate special occasions in their lives, including weddings, which is one of the reasons we have her in today to talk to us. Thanks for coming in, Valerie.
Valerie: Thanks for having me.
Lisa: Valerie, you told me, “When I bought the store, I didn’t just buy a store. I became a stationer.” I want to hear more about that. I think this is something that in this day of age in digital and electronic and sort of non-tangible things, to have a very tangible thing that you are offering to people is important.
Valerie: It is very important. We, from an occasion invitation, whether it’s your wedding invitation to your personal stationery, that you write, I think, to a note on your business card, we actually are in the business of … To some degree, branding, whether it’s the event, the person or the business and we do it on fine print paper with different processes and the tone and the texture of that, as well as the proper etiquette.
There are still rules. We live in a digital world where a lot of the old rules seem to have gone away, but we try very hard to keep social norms and a high expectation of social graciousness. That’s my job as an expert, as a stationer.
Lisa: Tell me how you got to be where you are now. You’re not originally from Maine. Is that right?
Valerie: Nope. I grew up in the Washington, DC area. Married a Mainer who had a busy business and traveled and when our oldest child was about 18-months-old, we said, “If you have to travel, we can live anywhere,” and decided to move home to Maine for him. Then it became my home, too. We ended up here about eighteen years ago. The way we got involved in the stores, we were a customer of the stores, one of the oldest retail stores, so one of the only stores that’s changed hands multiple times and each owner feels a real protectiveness to protect the integrity of the store.
My husband and I … It was actually our dream to buy it as a retirement business, when we first started shopping in the store. That’s how I ended up there many years later through twists and turns.
Lisa: It used to be called Papier Gourmet?
Valerie: Yes.
Lisa: Not so long ago. Why the change?
Valerie: When I bought the store, we really wanted to update it to make it a little bit more relevant. We also, during the holidays, would get calls for Stilton Cheese and food. It was just a little complicated. We decided to become a little bit more concise. We also sell things other than paper, but they have a relevance to paper. If it’s a gift, we make sure that it’s packaged in a beautiful paper or a box. It was a time to just put my mark on it and rebrand it with a new vision for where we are now in society.
Lisa: There is something about paper that I think many people find very appealing. I know those of us who write journals or send cards or send … Hopefully, most of us send thank you notes. There’s something about touching a thick card stock, piece of paper or something about taking a fine pen and writing on a page. That’s so different than typing out an email, as great as that technology is.
Valerie: It’s true. There’s actually research that we’re using a different part of our brains. When we’re connected digitally and we’re using our fingers to digitally put things on our phone, it doesn’t commit to memory the same way that the graph and motor skills of actually writing. In fact, we have people who come in all the time and say, “I know I’m the last person who is using a paper calendar, but I literally can’t remember my life.”
The reason they can’t remember their life is by digitally entering things, you have to use your visual memory to remember your life versus the graph and motor skills that it takes, that goes into your memory in a different place.
Not only for your organizing your personal life, but you also put your energy into what you’re writing by hand, whether it’s that “thank you” note. I also often say we get young gentlemen who come in and say, “I need a piece of paper, because I want to write a love letter.” Because a love text isn’t going to stick around and when they want to declare themselves, they need help and they want a piece of paper and a nice pen and they want to write a letter.
There’s something to the hand, to the paper, to the brain that allows us to unplug from our digital world.
Lisa: There’s also something nice about being able to keep the things that we receive that are written. I’ve had invitations to my brother’s and sister’s weddings. I’ve had notes from patients. I’ve had notes from my children. These are things that you can have, as opposed to something digital, which you can find it on your hard drive, but it’s not the same kind of spirit that’s infused. I think.
Valerie: It is. I worry that we’re no longer going to have scrapbooks, that it’s fun to look back to grandmothers or great-grandmothers scrapbooks and that if we don’t write and keep ticket stubs and do things like that, as well, as a stationer going back to that, I’m involved in every milestone in people’s lives. I do birth announcements. We do christening invitations, bar mitzvah, weddings.
I also, my job is to sit with a widow when she’s lost her husband or a widower and do the proper acknowledgements and things like that. It’s a way. These are historical documents for your life or your family and that … The tactile ability to keep and put them away in that box have generations go back and try to have an insight into our life. I don’t think that’s going to happen with texts and emails.
I feel it’s just very important and it’s part of the mission, the story, to be there and be available to provide the materials. To keep that, I call it a gracious life.
Lisa: It’s interesting that you’re talking about being with people at the time of their milestones. I would imagine that that’s also a time of heightened emotions on people’s parts and it’s something that … It’s not for you, simply, just a sales situation, a sales position. You’re really acting … I don’t know, as someone who helps them communicate things in a way that perhaps they wouldn’t have been able to access otherwise.
Valerie: Yes, I sit with them as a confidant, as a friend. They trust me to give them the right advice of, how’s the best way to communicate what we’re trying to communicate and help them be of the rational piece when they’re in that emotional state? We work as partners and I help them make the decisions by working through that if it’s particularly … The joy of a new baby or the frenzy of a wedding and making sure I keep them grounded in decisions that are authentically them.
We are putting either the person, the event, the couple on a piece of paper and the font, the color of it, the color of the paper is an embodiment of either the person or the event. Weddings. I often ask brides … I’ll try to ask brides what color their dress is. If their dress is a sparkly, bright crisp white, 9 times out of 10, they’re going to pick a bright white paper and if their in a creamy, ivory soft color, I know they’re going to be in an ivory paper because that’s them. We’re trying to make a picture with the words, the colors, the texture, the paper that’s authentically them. That’s my job.
Lisa: I think, recently, somebody wrote and article and I can’t recall where this was but discussing sort of the fact that all of the pictures of our children are now going to be flawless. The pictures that I take of my 14-year-old, they could all be altered, whereas the pictures that I took of my now 21-year-olds, those were the hard copy and what you got was what you got.
The interesting thing about paper is that even though you know there is usually consistency to it, there is that possibility of flaw and there is something about that that makes it more precious, I think.
Valerie: It is. We actually go through rigorous proofing process. One of the things that people, when they come in, brides or couples, particularly younger people, sorely underestimate is the amount of time because we are creating a historical document and we want it to be perfect. It takes time to choose to pick the right paper, to pick the right font and then to take the wording and present it.
When they see it, it may not be what they had in their mind. I have to try to figure out what their imagining in their mind. The proofing process can take five or six rounds. Each of those can take a week. If they’re coming in saying, “I want to send my invitations out in three weeks.” It’s really hard to provide that as perfect because if there’s a mistake, it’s wrong. That’s a huge responsibility for us and it’s a partnership with them.
Yes, you’re right. There may be flaws in the paper or the textures in the paper, but what we’re always trying to do is get the words … for there to be no mistakes and that is a process. It’s part of the creative process and then the proofing process. It’s like a magazine or a book. If it’s printed and that mistake is there, that mistake is there.
Lisa: It sounds like you’re very careful about making sure that whatever can be controlled can be controlled and then if it just happens to be … I don’t know, a card stock … I don’t know enough about paper to be able to say anything, but I’m thinking about the little ridges that sometimes come up or a little nubbin that kind of pokes its way to the surface, but it’s just part of the beauty of the card itself. It doesn’t come out as a flaw, so much.
Valerie: It is. No, it’s the beauty of … the texture and the tone and the texture of paper and it being something real. In letter press printing, particularly, because of the way that the ink soaks into the paper, you can look at three different pieces and the tone or the color will be different because of the print process. Engraving, orthography, you can have a little extra piece of ink that could be on there, that might be out of place, but it’s still part of the piece. As though we’re trying to get to perfect and wording there’s still character that each piece isn’t necessarily perfect. We make a lot of things in-house where we do layered papers and we do all that work by hand.
We try as hard as we can to center them and do all that, but they’re not all perfect, but they’ve been handmade for the people that we care about and our clients and most people accept that as part of the beauty of it, is that not every border is exactly perfect but it’s within … It shows that it’s been handcrafted.
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Lisa: It must be interesting, in particular, to work with wedding announcements because you’re taking two people who have very different … or may have very different views of life or their wedding and trying to come up with some kind of design that works for both of them.
Maybe one person doesn’t really care as much about the invitation or maybe both people care a lot about the invitation and to kind of try to bring that all together, because it is, in a way, almost the opening salvo. It’s the “Here’s the wedding. Here’s the announcement.”
Valerie: It’s the first thing that the guests see. It’s very interesting. Often times, a couple will come in and she may have done Pinterest and looked at a ton of things and he hasn’t looked at all. It could be the opposite too, but it’s more likely to be that. My process is, is I make them look at a lot of things to educate their eye together without me there, so that they have the opportunity to say freely, “I like this. I don’t like this.”
It can be a discovery process. They might not realize how far apart they are, stylistically. Then that’s my job to try to find a mental ground. Wedding invitations, particularly, my goals are three things. One is, when their family or their friends open the invitation that from the moment they look at it, I’ve captured them as a couple and the people say, “That’s so them.”
Two, that it also, then captures the bride and grooms or the couple’s vision of their wedding and the party afterwards, so that the guests know what to expect. That includes social cues of what to wear. All of those things are in the language, as well as in the tone and in the texture, how formal, how informal is going to give people a vision of what they’re going to.
Then my third thing is, I always say to them, once they settle on a couple of choices, “This is a historical document. I want you to look at it in 20 years and be as happy and let it trigger your mind to recall all those great memories.”
If they’re looking at something that’s extremely trendy but I don’t perceive them as being really trendy, I’m going to question that in them because I want to make sure that they’re not unhappy. It would be like the bride in the 80s, super Diana dress and had to have it because it was in and 20 years later goes, “Oh my God. I can’t believe I looked like that.”
Those are my three goals, with any couple, is that it’s authentically them, it’s previews the event and that it stays that historical document that in 20 years, they feel is still that important piece, again, saying, “This is our commitment.”
My last thing is, brides and grooms and couples and men want to come in and they can often be very, very, focused on the party, but the invitation is actually to the ceremony and most of the times, it’s a religious event. I try to ground them back into that they’re getting married and that they’re having a big party afterward, because it really is the marriage and then the big party.
Lisa: That’s interesting, because people could look at the invitation as just more of a superficial thing that goes along with more of a superficial party, but what you’re saying is it’s a very solid, tangible indication of the gravity of getting married.
Valerie: If it’s religious surface, it’s a sacrament. We’re representing the invitation as to a very sacred event. Sometimes they haven’t really thought of it like that. It gives them a new perspective.
Lisa: I like the word that you use. “Graciousness.” This idea that … Life does seem to move very quickly. We’re going from one thing to the next and maybe … The word “mindful” is used a lot these days, but this sense of … I don’t know. Graciousness, gentility. I don’t want to use the word “formality” but just that there is some have to … just being alive and doing things, like having a baby or getting married. There is some celebration of that “have,” I guess.
Valerie: Yes. You say graciousness, it’s also, I think, included in that is gratitude. When we write, again, commit words to paper, they’re there for a long time. Being able to express our gratitude or our joy or the tone of celebration, graciously in writing is really important.
I get e-vites all the time and what I know about myself with email, is if it drops below my screen, I don’t remember it, but if I can put it up on the board in front of my desk, the event, to me, takes more importance. It’s part of my consciousness, or the note or whatever it is. It is, again, that tangible. Digital can feel very intangible and we need more tangible in our lives, I think.
Lisa: You also have become a florist. That’s relatively new?
Valerie: It’s relatively new. We started it in April. We were lucky to hire a known floral designer who had owned a successful business, actually, across the street from us for four years that sold the business and then the business closed and he had been around. I actually hired him to work on the store, thinking he’d work with brides and I could teach him paper and then I realized how talented he was and went, “There’s a real intersection here.”
Again, flowers are something we give for milestone events. If someone has a baby and has been in the hospitals, for funerals and in weddings. It’s another expression. It’s a very alive expression of graciousness. It’s been a great addition to the store and it’s been a great way, I think, to add beauty and thoughtfulness to people’s lives and that would be the people who come in and buy flowers or something for someone else, or sending them or bringing them home.
It’s a bit of, again, slowing down, enjoying something visible, enjoying something tangible. It’s added so much dimension to the store.
Lisa: I love the idea of flowers having some deeper meaning. I think going back to Victorian times, if you sent a color rose it meant one thing or if you sent violets it meant another. There’s something about that that just really appeals to me. The same way, that picking up a journal and having the right paper to write on appeals to me. I can’t really explain why, but I think there is something that touches me and probably many people emotionally and probably in other ways. Is this something that when people come in to talk about their flowers, is this something that you ever get into?
Valerie: I think James has a good sense of some of that historical meaning, particularly in weddings. There are current social connotations to certain flowers and different colors of flowers and yellow roses versus red roses. Red roses are very romantic, sexy thing. A yellow rose is a softer, more friendly. It has a different connotation.
Yes, when we’re taking orders or we’re talking, we are talking about, “Who is it for? What is the context?” We do a lot of corporate flowers. We do flowers weekly in people’s offices and something that a husband is going to send to his wife for his birthday may be a very different feeling, arrangement, than something we put in someone’s office every week.
Yeah, there is, again, tone and texture and the connotation of the flowers and the different colors. It’s very still prevalent and the way we view flowers today.
Lisa: I’m very excited to go visit your store again, having been there a few times already and to see now the florist part of Papier and Fleuriste. I encourage other people to come find your store. How can our listeners learn more about the work that you’re doing?
Valerie: We’re located on Free Street. you can see us at our website, which is papiermaine.com. It’s a great vision into what you can find in the store. We have kept away from e-commerce and all of that, because our goal is to bring you in and interact with you and have a relationship with you. We would love you to come and stop in.
Lisa: Well, I will be there. I will be stopping in. I’m sure that many people, after hearing our conversation, will also stop in. It’s been a pleasure to speak with you today. We’ve been talking with Valerie Kyros, who is the owner of Papier and Fleuriste, a stationary store and florist in Portland. Thanks so much.
Valerie: Thank you.