If you are interested in do it yourself wedding invitations there are a few things you need to know, even if you are using a wedding invitation kit.

Designing Wedding Invitations by Choosing Fonts

The first thing people tend to do when they design wedding invitations with their word processor is pick out the most funky font possible. Now, I can’t really blame most people for making these mistakes because there are only so many decent fonts that come installed with Windows, but if you are planning on creating your own wedding invitations, then buying at the least, a decent script font would be a good idea. You are spending a good amount of money on the invitations and therefore the most important thing on them, the couple’s names, should be gorgeous, or at least look good. You can get some fonts that look good for around $20-35. I would not go looking for free fonts because you will most likely get some more cheesy fonts. The following are common fonts that people use and they are just bad. Please don’t use them for a wedding invitation:

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The following are some examples of good fonts, but may be a little pricey:

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Decent Fonts Installed on Windows

Arial
Franklin
Georgia Lucida
Palatino
Tahoma
Times New Roman
Trebuchet

A good place to buy a script font is Veer or
Linotype or Fonts.com.

You could also take a look at my Wedding Invitation Layout Design Service and not worry about the fonts at all.

What Graphic Designers Can do That You Can’t

This is where a graphic designer will have more options than the typical do it yourselfer. A designer will have a library of fonts to picks from because they have invested the money in the fonts. As if that were not enough, they also have the major advantage of being able to use the fonts that they have collected in a way the rookie cannot. They have the programs, such as Adobe Illustrator and Indesign, that can take advantage of hidden characters in fonts with the Opentype abilities. For example they can take the normal font and turn them into something really fancy, like the above.

How to Use your Fonts for Wedding Invitation Design

Another major mistake that people tend to do is set all of the type in a script type or in italic. This is really a terrible thing to do. People are not trained to read large amounts of script type and this is especially cumbersome. It is particularly difficult for older people that do not have as sharp of eyesight as they once did. The only exception I would make for doing this is if you were planning on having a calligrapher hand do every invitation. The best way to think about script type is that it should be the icing on the cake. Use it for the names of the couple and headers on map cards and choice type.

Choosing Type Sizes
Whenever you are creating an invitation it is a good idea to vary the sizes, but of course this should be done in moderation. You wouldn’t want too many size variations. You should probably not use more than 3 different sizes. It is also best to not use size 12 type for the body text. This really is a little large. Size 10 to 11 would be best in most cases. The names of the couples should most likely be a little larger, but not too big, there should still be at least a quarter of an inch to half an inch of margin.

Capitalization
Something that I have seen people do before is use all Caps in a script type. This is bad. These fonts are not designed to be used like this. Using all caps is usually not a good idea in general because people recognize words by their shapes. All caps is difficult to read because the words become square blocks. Suffice it to say, you can get away with using all caps on wedding invitations if you use small caps, which is like the example with the font serlio in where the first letter is a bit bigger than the others. It would also be ok if you make sure the space between the lines was a little bigger than normal and making sure to keep the font small. If you are trying to make a bold statement, a limited amount of type set in a large size can work very well, like the first image in this post.

Legibility
Legibility is also something that you will need to keep in mind. Make sure, especially when designing with vellum, that you can easily read all of the information. It is a good idea to print out your invitations and make a sample wedding invitation at least once when you think you are done designing the wedding invitation.

Appreciate the Contrasts
Something to keep in mind when designing a wedding invitation is that contrasts between fonts is a good thing. Using a type that doesn’t have feet, which is called a sans serif font with a font that is scripty can be a beautiful things and lends a more modern tone to the invitation.

Envelope Sizing
There is just about nothing worse than folding your invitation in half so that it fits in your envelope. Make sure to pick your envelope before you create your invitations.

There are many other things to learn about type. Hopefully you will avoid making some of the common pitfalls whenever you design wedding invitations for your wedding.

Good Examples:

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Bad Examples:

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