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It’s normal for couples to look for ways to adhere to their wedding budget, and doing your own wedding invitations seems like a great place to start. After all, how hard can it be to head to the craft store and print off some DIY stationery? It’s the actual act of creation that’s difficult. There’s a reason talented graphic designers make the big bucks.
Luckily, there are tons of options for personalizing wedding invitations that don’t involve starting from scratch. Check out these nine tips for designing your own wedding invitations and give guests a glimpse at all the magic they’ll get to experience on your big day.
1. Start with a Professional Template
Unless you have crazy-good graphic design skills and access to the software necessary to create invites from scratch, you’ll save time and money by starting with professional Wedding Invitation templates. These designs have all the necessary elements already in place. You just have to edit the text boxes to include your details.
If you’re wary of having the same invitations as everyone else, don’t be. Thanks to customization options that allow you to tweak the invite’s color scheme, the photos you use, the font and other aspects, there are thousands of combinations available. You can create something entirely unique without the burden of designing everything from the ground up.
2. Choose your Theme
All weddings have a theme. Some are obvious, like Halloween or Art Deco, while other themes are looser and based off of a color palette or a general vibe. Knowing how you want your big day to look will help you choose an invite template and tweak it to match your vision. Categories like classic, destination, modern, rustic, unique, vintage, watercolor, beach, botanical, nautical, and Art Deco provide not only guidance but also inspiration.
Keep in mind too that your wedding stationery doesn’t have to be totally matchy-matchy with your décor, your venue, or even your theme. A destination wedding can still have Art Deco or Vintage Wedding Invitations. An outdoor wedding doesn’t automatically require a flowery design. But having a starting point in mind helps.
3. Consider Specialty Invitations
Surprise! Wedding invitations don’t have to be a perfect rectangle. You can now satisfy your creative side with shaped invitations that have rounded corners or bracketed edges. These specialty shapes might not work with every design, but they’ll add to some suites to amplify the intended impact. For instance, imagine a romantic floral design on a card with sleek rounded corners. Or put a vintage design on a bracketed invitation for even more charm.
There are other specialty invitations that offer customization beyond the shape of the invite itself. Folded invitations are like an envelope and invitation all in one. Guests open the exterior to reveal a printed interior that acts as the actual invitation. Other folded invitations use a vertical design with a pocket at the bottom to secure enclosures such as RSVP cards.
4. Know your Paper Types
When you print your invitations at home, you likely have one paper option on hand and it’s the same stuff you use to print memes and crossword puzzles you snagged off the internet. Sure, you can buy nicer paper, but you better make sure your home printer can handle it and that you have the right kind of ink to prevent smudging.
Professional printers have the capacity to utilize all kinds of paper, including:
- Premium Smooth: Silky smooth stationery that allows all of your design elements to shine
- Luxe Satin: A modern version of matte-finish paper that’s super soft
- Luxe Pearl: This paper has a subtle sheen that acts almost like a filter, softening sharp colors and photographs
5. Perfect your Wording
As you fill in the blanks on your wedding invitation template, you’ll want to keep both etiquette and your personal preferences in mind. There are some rules to Wedding Invitation Wording. For instance, abbreviations are typically kept to a minimum. Other than common titles like Mr. and Mrs., you’ll spell out words, dates, and numbers in their entirety.
There are also certain types of information that should always be included (not necessarily in this order):
- You and your spouse-to-be’s names
- The names of the hosts
- The date and time of the ceremony
- The venue name and address
- Reception information including time, venue name, and venue address
- Any special information, such as dress code
- The URL for your wedding website (if applicable)
Many couples forget that there should be verbiage explicitly inviting guests to the wedding. Something like “NAME and NAME request your presence at” or “NAME and NAME invite you to share in and celebrate the marriage of their children” works fine. As for how to list the host’s names, you’ll need to decide whether it’s the parents or the couple acting as hosts and follow the appropriate etiquette as to who comes first and how those names are displayed.
6. Start Brainstorming Early
There’s a reason couples in the United States are engaged for an average of 12 to 18 months. It takes a long time to plan a wedding, especially if there are a lot of moving parts. The bigger the celebration, the longer it usually takes to pull it together. To ensure your wedding goes smoothly, you need to do things like buying and sending invitations far in advance of the big day.
You can use a wedding checklist to make your own to-do list and calendar. Experts recommend starting your wedding invitation search around eight to nine months before your wedding. At the six to seven-month mark, order your customized wedding invitations and start addressing them. Finally, two to three months before your wedding, it’s time to mail your invitations to lucky friends and family.
If this seems like you’re cutting it close, fear not. You’ll be sending save the dates long before you even buy invitations. Guests will get plenty of time to make travel plans and secure time off from work and school.
7. Decide How Many to Make/Order
Once you’ve customized your wedding invitations and love the result, it’s time to buy. While many vendors only offer invitations in packs of 25 or 50, MagnetStreet offers invitation quantities in batches of 10. That makes it easy to get just what you need. Don’t order your exact guest count, though. You’ll want extras in case one gets lost or if a few get dribbles of wine on them during your wedding planning party. Also make sure you have at least one invitation to frame as a keepsake or put in your wedding scrapbook.
Most vendors will offer you quantity-related deals, meaning the more invitations you order, the lower the per-piece price you’ll be quoted. You may get a deal on certain add-ons if you buy them at the same time as your invitation order too. If you want RSVP postcards, enclosure cards, vellum bands, envelope liners, or professional address printing as part of your finished invitation design, have those decisions made before you finalize your purchase.
8. Weigh your Options for Addressing your Invitations
Remember in high school when you had to write a series of essays for your final exam and your hand got that wicked cramp? Addressing wedding invitations is a lot like that, except now you actually care how your writing looks. Yes, handwritten addresses have a personal feel to them, but opting to have a professional take over means both return and guest addresses will be pretty, legible, and done in plenty of time to meet your mailing deadline.
Check with your wedding stationery vendor to see if they offer addressing services for an additional fee. As mentioned earlier, many will bundle the service in with your invitation purchase for savings. All you need to do is upload your guest list, and the pros take care of the rest.
9. Add a Personal Touch
With customized invitations, you’ve already had multiple chances to put your stamp on templated designs. But that doesn’t mean your opportunity for originality has come to an end. Start with what you can include in your invitation envelope. Some people stuff them with glitter or confetti in their wedding colors. Others drive home a quirky theme with stuffing that’s totally outside the box, like googly eyes or mini-pumpkin erasers for a Halloween wedding.
There’s one major caveat here. Adding weight or distorting your invitation envelopes can result in additional postage fees. A simple dusting of heart confetti is fine. Trying to sneak in a keychain engraved with you and your future spouse’s initials is a lot less likely to fly.
One worry couples often have is knowing whether the invitation they design on their computer will live up to the hype in real life. There’s an easy solution to that. MagnetStreet’s free sample offer allows you to order a wedding essentials kit or a sample of your custom invitation, delivered right to your door.
