With the high costs of weddings these days, many couples look to save money by creating printable wedding invitations themselves. After all, they say to themselves, "Hey! We have a computer, some basic word processing software, and a brand new inkjet printer that spits out a gazillion different colors. How hard can it be?" In a word: (very) hard. But notice I didn't say impossible?!
With enough planning and thoughtfulness, you can create your own printable wedding invitations, and save yourselves a bundle in the process.
In addition to the cost savings, creating your own printable wedding invitations is a great way to place a stamp of uniqueness on your event. For many weddings, the look and feel of the invitation creates the mood for the event, so how you go about designing your printable wedding invitations is critical. Planning a beach, destination wedding? Set the tone with island themes and icons. Decking out the hallowed halls of your local church or country club? Then, perhaps think more traditional thoughts.
Either way, let your printable wedding invitation serve as the calling card to your event and set the tone for what your guests can expect!
Here is a little primer to help you think through all of the issues as you go about the planning process to creating your own gorgeous printable wedding invitations.
Tip #1: Bleed it and Weep. What does this mean? In the printing world there is a term that separates the commercial from the residential DIY guys, and this is the Bleed. The bleed means you're taking the color or the graphic all the way to the edge of the media (i.e., the paper you're using). To bleed the edge means you're laying down ink all the way to the edge of the media. Notice how your magazines all have graphics, color, and photos that go across the ENTIRE page and stop only when the page stops? That's called a bleed.The challenge is that most desktop printers these days cannot bleed the edge. Instead, they usually a quarter-inch border around the media where the printer head is not able to move beyond. Therefore, if you try to work with a design that has a background color (think: deep red with white font), it will be close to impossible to create a printable wedding invitation that does NOT have a white border going all the way around it by simply sending the pages through your printer.To get around this issue, you have two choices: Your first choice is to only design with a white background and remove the bleed issue altogether. This is not a bad choice. Selecting cream or white colored media and printing with a dark tone is an elegant, classic look that will never go out of style. In these instances, you can find stock paper that's precut to the size you require. Send these through your desktop printer, and presto! Your printable wedding invitations are ready to rock the Casbah. Your second choice is to set a background color and design with zero restriction. Print the wedding invitations through your desktop printer, and then take them in for cutting at your local copy store. Many copy stores will actually provide this service for free. The downside is that your invitation will be slightly smaller than what's traditional. Many couples choosing to make their own printable wedding invitations have taken this approach. As you shop around and look at the millions of different ways to print your wedding invitations, you'll start to see that one of the most popular trends these days is to create wedding invitations with the colors "reversed out", which means the white is the font, and the dark color is the background. To present a more modern/trendy look to your wedding invitations, while still keeping them self-printable, this is a great option that works if you're careful and precise.
Tip #2: Fonts, fonts, and fonts. Most great graphic design and layout hinges upon the look and feel of the fonts being used. Unless you're a graphic designer by trade, there's little reason for you to have more than just a few dozen fonts on your computer, which will limit your creativity when it comes time to design your printable wedding invitations.The good news is that there are a ton of FREE fonts on the internet that you can download and install onto your computer for use in your design. They are simple to install and will help to create a unique look and feel for your printable wedding invitations.A word of caution, however. Many free fonts are marketing ploys to induce customers to one day purchase "real" fonts. Companies get customers comfortable with something for free, and then they try to upsell these customers into their premium fonts that come at a price. Although, I'm always trying to find ways to provide the most budget conscious advice, in this instance I'm going to recommend that you spend the money and BUY the font that you think will work best for your printable wedding invitations. I don't recommend purchases very often, but there is a HUGE gap between the quality, selection, elegance, and originality of free fonts vs. the ones that you need to pay for. In my opinion, the upgrade to a paid font is well worth it, especially since most fonts don't cost more than $40 or $50 to purchase.
Tip #3: Don't pull a Britney and just blame the Media. Media in this case refers to the quality and thickness of the paper you choose (and not TMZ.com as Britney might have assumed!). When it comes to creating your printable wedding invitations, you'll see that there are just as many choices for media type as there are cover shots of Brangelina. Your job (and you SHOULD choose to accept it) is to find and use the media that best suits your needs.The two big considerations on media are thickness and color. Thickness for paper is referred to as its "weight." The weight refers to how much a ream of that paper weighs (there's actually a LOT more to it than that, but I want to keep you awake!). If you walk into any office supply store, you'll see paper weights ranging from 10 to 50 lbs! Just remember: The heavier the weight, the thicker the paper. And thicker (when it comes to paper...not so much for waist lines) is BETTER. You want a sturdy invite. One that will withstand the test of time and can stay stuck to the outside of your guests' refrigerators for at least a few months!Note, however, that not all printers will accept all types of media! Most inkjet printers will accept a maximum paper weight of 100 lbs. Any higher than that and the chances of jamming are quite good. Note too that glossy and ultra high-end papers (such as cotton) will not work in many inkjet printers since the ink comes out "wet," the images often smear and blur.
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