For whatever reason you may not always be able to pay somebody else to create your wedding invitations. You may even have the desire to create do it yourself or diy wedding invitations. If this is the case there are a few things that you will need to keep in mind.
Most of the time trying to create do it yourself wedding invites can be a daunting task whenever you are not use to doing this type of work. There are a lot of things to choose from. You’ll have to decide if you simply want to print the invitations and have that be it or if you would also like to add extra things like ribbons and additional paper layers into the mix.
The first thing you may need to ask yourself is what type of theme do you want to center the invitation around. Usually if you pick one thing to focus the decor of the invitation around this can make it a lot easier to come to a clean solution that will look more professional.
Whenever it comes to the actual font that you will use for the invitation it is best to pick a highly legible neutral font for the body type of the invitation. You should use a script font or more stylized font for the names and any header type that you use in the other pieces such as the RSVP cards or any map cards that you plan on creating. You should also consider not using the standard 12 point type that comes on your computer. Usually this type size really is a little large and the invitation will probably look better with a 10 to 11 point type. If you have a legible font this will not be a problem for people to read.
Invitations are typically 5 x 7 in size although many other sizes have become popular especially in recent times. You can get away with using a first class stamp for envelopes that are as small as 3.5″ x 5″ and as large as 6 1/8″ high by 11 1/2″ long and no thicker than 1/4″ thick. You also need to make sure that your envelope does not weigh more than 3 ounces. You can get away with getting quite a bit of things in an envelope before this occurs. The only thing that you really need to watch out for is that you don’t end up creating a square invitation. Square invitations cost more to put in the mail because they cannot be processed through the postage machine like other mail.
Of course you don’t necessarily have to start from scratch whatever it comes to creating your invitations. There are plenty of wedding invitation kits out there that you can buy. The problem is that they do tend to cost a bit but if you look hard enough I’m sure you can find something on sale. The reality of it is that just buying the materials can cost a lot. If you want quality paper and quality envelopes it is going to cost you more than it would a wedding invitation company because they can buy them in bulk and get a much better price. It is definitely worth doing a price comparison to get an idea of if you believe you are going to be able to do them yourself and actually have them be cheaper.
There are a lot of tools out there that can help you with the creation of your invitation. The professionals use special software created by Adobe that costs thousands of dollars and take a lot of time to learn. It is very possible to use Microsoft Word to create your invitations. It is a bit more difficult because you don’t have a high level of control but it is definitely doable. This would be a difficult program to use if you wanted to do anything rather complicated. If you are only interested in setting the type up then Microsoft word will do the job. You could also use Microsoft publisher which is a pretty good program for doing different layouts.
If you are creating a large amount of invitations I would highly suggest that you take your printed paper to Kinko’s and have them cut it to the right size because they will be able to do it much more accurately and in any much smaller amount of time. Plus it only costs about a dollar to cut through 500 sheets of paper. you might even decide it is worth it to just have them do the printing as well, although if you are planning to do this in color this will probably be one of the greatest costs of doing the wedding invitations yourself.
As far as the actual assembly there are lots of tools to help you out with this as well. If you’re doing any folding I would highly suggest you get yourself an easy way to score the paper before you create the fold. This is important because if you don’t create a score first the paper will bulge and not look very pretty. I personally have a cutterpede with a scoring cartridge that I use for this. You can get them at Amazon here:
The company that makes this also has many different types of cartridges that do decorative edges if you are interested in adding that type of detail to the invitation. If you do get the cutterpede you should know that it comes with a normal cutting cartridge so if you don’t have a paper cutter this is a great thing to get because it does many different tasks. There are also many different types of paper punches that create all sorts of different shapes. If you are planning on using a ribbon you should definitely consider getting the hole punch that has two slits so that you can more easily and more accurately thread the ribbon.
One thing you should keep in mind whenever you are making all of these decisions about how you’re going to create a do it yourself invitation is that every extra step takes more time. There is nothing wrong with spending a lot of time on your wedding invitations but if you feel that you are running out of time it would probably be best to limit the amount of extra steps you’ll have to take in order to complete one. It would be a good idea to time yourself whenever it comes to creating about 10 of these and then you’ll have a decent idea of how much time it will take for you to do them all. Of course at the completion stage you will most likely have your bridesmaids helping you out by putting them together with you. Do try and keep all of this in mind because you’ll also need to address the envelopes and that typically takes a lot of time all on its own.
If you are looking for some more things to help you decorate your wedding invitations then take a look at my amazon Store.
If you would like some better software to help you design your wedding invitations I highly recommend Adobe products. I use Adobe for all of the designing that I do. They create top of the line software for professional designers all over the world.. The only disadvantage to the casual user is that they can be expensive. Fortunately, they do have a great program for the casual user called
Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 -, which is affordable and easier to use than their professional software. This will definitely help you with any sort of photos that you would like to put into your wedding invitations.
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Though I have been happily married for 15 long years, your blog has made me some sort of nostalgic.
Yes I myself had made my own wedding invation card. I was able to give some kind of personal touch to each and every invitation which matters most to all the invitee, I thought. We’ve choosen some handmade papers, make a card and draw some designs with felt pens, which make them unique. Everybody praised our idea and we still have our card as a prized possession.
Thanks for your beautiful blog.
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