The Twentieth
Christmas Eve at Ardmore
Vendor guide
If you are reading only one part
- Florist / greenery
- Read the greenery note under Day-of notes before anything else.
The centre of that table is not yours to arrange and not yours to supply — it is cut from the
garden on the morning of the 24th by whoever is up first, and it has never been the same twice in
twenty years. What is wanted from you is everything around that, and restraint about it.
- Venue stylist
- The room runs on eleven candles and the fire — there is no overhead
light in the dining room at all. Everything you place will be lit from below and will read darker
and warmer than it does when you set it up in daylight. Check your work at night before you leave.
- Photographer
- The stationery list is the shot list. Worth a frame: the long table laid in
its five named stretches before anyone sits, the gold foil catching a candle, and the garland at
about seven o'clock when the room is full. It is a dark room by design — do not light it flat.
- Cook / caterer
- Christmas Eve is the fish night; the goose is there only because
Rhys's mother will not eat fish. The menu card deliberately has no course headings — it is a dinner
in a house, not a restaurant, and it should not be re-sequenced to read like one.
The event
- Date
- Thursday, 24 December 2026
- Sitting
- Half past six
- Venue
- Ardmore House
Ballinspittle Road, Kinsale
- Venue character
- An 1840s farmhouse added to badly and lovingly for two centuries. The
dining room is the oldest part — low ceiling, walls in a very dark green Rhys mixed himself and has
never repainted, one long refectory table that seats thirty-eight with both ends put in.
- Guests
- 38
- Dress
- Black tie optional
- Replies by
- 1 December 2026
The visual identity at a glance
Typefaces: Playfair Display (one word per piece) and Cormorant Garamond
(everything else, as tracked capitals).
Navy carries about seventy per cent of every piece and cream leads on it. The greens are the only
polychrome and they are deliberately several — there is no single flat Christmas green
anywhere in this suite, and that is a decision, not an omission. Gold and red are incidents: a rule, a
berry, an edge. Neither is ever a field.
Match to the printed piece, not to these squares, and match it by candlelight. These are
screen values. The room has no overhead light — anything you match in daylight will read several shades
darker and warmer at half past six. The gilt on the stationery is foil, so it moves with the
candles; a flat gold ink or ribbon mixed to #C9962F will sit dead beside it.
Stationery arriving
| Piece | Trim | Quantity |
|---|
| Invitation | 5 × 7″ | one per household |
| Envelope liner | to envelope size | as invitations |
| Save the date | 5 × 7″ | as invitations |
| Menu card | 4 × 9″ | 42 |
| Place cards | 2 × 3.5″ folded | 42 |
| Table markers | 5 × 7″ | 6 |
| Welcome sign | 24 × 36″ | 1 |
| Gift tags | small tag | 42 |
| Thank you card | 4.25 × 5.5″ | one per household |
Counts are 38 guests plus a proofing
margin; the six table markers are the five named stretches plus a spare. “One per household” is the
envelope count, not the guest count.
Day-of notes
- The greenery
- This is the one thing that matters more than anything else on this
job. Every year on the morning of the 24th, whoever is up first goes out with the secateurs and
cuts whatever the garden is offering, and that is what goes down the middle of the table. In twenty
years it has never once been the same arrangement twice — some years nearly all spruce, the year of
the storm mostly ivy and bare hawthorn. It is the only part of the evening that genuinely cannot be
planned, and it is not decoration: it is a record of one particular December. Please do not
supply it, improve it, wire it, or tidy it. The whole design exists to hold that idea.
- The table
- One long refectory table seating thirty-eight, laid in five named
stretches so people know roughly where to sit — The Holly Walk, The Yew Arch, The Orchard, The
Long Border, The Glasshouse. Every name is a real part of the garden the greenery is cut from.
They are stretches of one table, not five tables; do not separate them.
- The light
- Eleven candles and the fire. No overhead light exists in that room and none is
to be brought in. Anything that needs to be read — the menu, the place cards, the markers — has
been drawn to work at that level, which is also why there is no small type anywhere in the suite.
- Dinner
- Fish night. The goose is an exception, not a second main. No course headings on
the menu card — it is a dinner in a house.
- Material
- Opaque white litho on a heavy uncoated sheet dyed navy right through, so the cut
edge is navy too. Gold foil at small scale only. Nothing in this suite shimmers.
Please do not
- No tartan or plaid.
- No Santa, reindeer, snowmen, elves, robins or stars.
- No snowflakes — it does not snow here.
- No glitter, no sparkle, nothing that shimmers.
- Nothing that could have come off a supermarket shelf.
- No single flat “Christmas green”. The greens are several, and they are cut, not bought.
This list is the clients' own words, and it is short
because each line has been earned over nineteen previous years.
Questions about anything on this sheet
Ask the studio directly rather than working around a detail —
hello@evorrah.com. Artwork, vector files and colour references
for anything listed here can be sent to a supplier on request.