Tips For Home Printing Wedding Invitations

Making your own and home printing wedding invitations is a great way to save money on your wedding stationery. You've carefully thought about your design and now you're ready to print, but before you do, make sure you read these essential tips for home printing your invites.

- Practice - always do a trial run on your chosen paper. Think about whether the paper looks good? Does the design look OK on your chosen paper colour and size? Do you have good balance in your layout? Is it as you expected? If the answer is 'no' to any of these, it's back to the drawing board!

- Trim your trial run to your finished size (if you need to). This will check that the design fits as intended. It's best to get this right on your first one before you start printing out 50 or so invites!

- Print extras as part of the same batch - that way you'll have spares for any mistakes. I'd recommend at least 10-15 extra print outs for practice cards and as reserves for any mistakes.

- You can also print direct on to pre-made blank cards. Check the weight of paper your printer will take - mine easily takes a 250gsm paper stock, but check your own manufacturer's guidelines.

- Print out any practice cards on the 'draft' or 'fast' setting - it'll save your ink. Then when you're happy, run the invites out at the highest quality.

- For illustrations, pictures or photos - print on the highest quality for the best result.

- Some papers, such as vellum don't absorb the ink so it just sits on top of the paper until it is dry. This means that it's susceptible to smudging. In this case, print out individual sheets and remove them from your printer tray. Dry the print outs flat as individual sheets - not on top of one another.

- Also, print out vellum on 'fast' or 'draft' quality - they'll dry much quicker.

- Don't use watercolours or soluble pencils to add colour to your invitations. Inkjet ink is water soluble, so it will run and smudge with contact with water.

- Use a copy shop if you have any large amounts of cutting or copying to do. A copy shop will also copy onto special papers. This is especially useful for inserts - so use a template, print out one and then let the copy shop copy and cut it to size.