Design Your Own Wedding Invitations

These days, there is so many design tools available for the computer that almost anyone can create their own wedding invitations. It can be a great way to save money while creating wedding stationery which is unique and personal. These are the steps to follow if you wish to design your own wedding invitations.

The very first step is to think about the style of your wedding. If you are having a very formal wedding and wearing a ballgown with opulent wedding jewelry, you will need equally grand invitations. Do keep in mind that when going the DIY route, you will not be able to make engraved or letterpress stationery on your home printer. You could, however, make a design that a professional printer could then translate into letterpress or engraving (for a price, of course). Another idea for formal DIY invitations is to purchase stationery stock with a pre-engraved or letterpress motif and then add your own flat printing with the invitation wording at home. Most of the blank invitations are designed to be run through a home printer and the paper can be a very fine quality. For a casual wedding, still choose a nice heavy paper, but do not worry about letterpress or engraving.

Then think about the layout of your invitations. Do you prefer to follow a fairly standard format, perhaps with a customized border? That could very easily be created using a program like Photoshop. Or maybe you like the ultra-modern look of sans-serif fonts in a variety of sizes; that would be something that you could play around with in a basic word document before printing on your invitations. Creative use of color will add style to minimalist invitations. Remember to experiment with paper color as well as ink color. How would your wording look printed in espresso and red on pale blue? Or maybe you want to try charcoal lettering on yellow paper. Just keep in mind that if you want white lettering on dark paper, that will be an effect best created in letterpress, thermography, or engraving.

Personalize your DIY invitations with a unique motif that says something about your wedding. If you are having a classic elegant wedding and wearing a traditional wedding gown and jewelry, an elaborate monogram would be the ideal way to dress up your station. Either create it yourself by hand or in Photoshop, or find a local artist on a site like Craigslist to design your monogram. Ask them to save it as a jpeg file, and then you can easily insert it into your invitation template. The same goes for any image or motif you may choose, whether it is a pair of crossed golf clubs for the sporty couple, a sketch of your dog, a photo of the bride and groom, or a brightly colored tropical flower for a beach wedding.

Once you have the basic layout and motif decided, the next step in designing your own invitations is to consider the extras. Do you want to layer a printed vellum over a paper textured with flower petals? Maybe you want to make your wedding invitations several pages long and bind them like an art book? Or perhaps you would like to glitter the edges, add a bow to the top, or make a tri-fold invitation. You can also create very unique wedding invitations made to look like theater tickets, maps, or whatever else strikes your fancy.