Wedding invitations – tips on how to create your perfect invitation - Part I.

Weddings are one of the most beautiful events on the entire world for one’s life. When you get engaged, you immediately start to organise your dream wedding – at least in your head -, and sometimes you find yourself in joy searching for wedding ideas on the internet.

After a while you are finally able to decide with your other half about the overall theme and colour of the wedding, so the real ‘fun’ (I wrote this with commas as this time can be very stressful, too), the actual planning can begin. When you are already down to planning the details of the invitation itself you are on the right track.

Designing the layout of the wedding invitation will be a great fun as once you have the text prepared (that you want to write onto the invitation) you see a potential winner in each layout. In fact, the sky is the limit (and your wallet). There are hundreds of types, sizes and layouts available to create your own, personalised invitation. And till this time, I did not even speak about the many types of wedding stationary paper and printing techniques that are also available to you.

But first of all, let’s start with some basic advices that you better keep in mind while making up the text of the invite:

The best is, if you try to make your invitation completely like you, the paper given to the friends and relatives should always show your personality and somehow reflect to the main theme of the wedding. Some of the main points to keep in mind while creating a wedding invite are these:

• Simplicity – use a simple, clear and easy to read/run through layout, as the more complex the invitation, the more people tend to get detracted while reading it, so the whole invitation will be less memorable to them.
• Clear fonts – use simple, easy to read fonts, as it can be very annoying to explain almost every unreadable word for your family and friends that they are unable to spell at the first sight. The font usually tells a lot about the couple and the style of the upcoming wedding. You can find free Office fonts for download here or here. In my opinion, the Vivaldi-fonts are the best for a modern and yet classical wedding invitation.
• Formatting – try to center the lines and with this put a slight emphasis on the most important information. Write the names with a bit bigger font-size and the least important information (e.g. addresses) with a slightly smaller font-size. Try to keep the length of the lines between 2 and 8 words, as more can be confusing and can ruin the overall outlook of the invitation.
• Hierarchy – write the most important information closer to the top of the invitation and continue downwards with the less important stuff. Remember: names are the most important, then comes the fact that they are happy to announce they are going to marry (you can add a short, smart and/or funny text – this is a custom in my country), then comes the time and finally the place and any contacts (in case you want to print it onto the invitation).
• Colour – feel free to use colours on your invitation – but only a few and only those that somehow reflect to the main theme and colour of your wedding. It is a great idea to put emphasis on the names with some stylish and yet tasteful colour.
• Theme – always stick to the theme of the wedding with the overall layout of the invitation. Don’t use several fonts and too many different font-sizes or colours as this will only make your invitation completely messed up.
• After the text is formatted – take your time to choose the best size for your invitation and the type of the paper you are going to use. There are hundreds of different wedding invitations on the market, but feel free to create/ask for your own that you have always dreamt of.

• Rectangle – the most common type of invitations that can come in any size and paper type. Probably you can be the most creative with this evergreen outlook.
• Square – this is similar to the rectangle, but as the name suggests, the invitation is an equal-sided square. This fits best those invitations that are short and most down to business.
• Tea-length – compared to the square invitation this one is much more elongated and slim. On this type it is slightly harder to create a tasteful layout, as much fewer words can fit into one row.
• Layered – with this you can combine two different types of paper if you want, or write different info onto the different layers if desired. But be aware: more than two layers can totally mess up the whole romance of the invitation. The different layers are usually wrapped together with delicate ribbons and/or bows.
• Half-fold – as the name suggests, the invitation itself is folded into half. The most common is that all the information is on the inner page of the folded paper and the front page contains a picture, the names or a nice quote.
• Tri-fold – this type is folded into 3 parts. Similarly to the previous type (half-folded) the text usually is inside on the folded pages with some picture or quote and the front page is the most simple.
• Gate-fold – this one is an evergreen type as well: the two ‘gates’ are usually wrapped together with a delicate and beautiful ribbon or bow that matches the main colour of the wedding itself.
• Pocketfold – these type of invites have a little folded pocket on them where you can place a picture of the couple, a nice quote that somehow connects to the couple or an RSVP card.
• Message in a bottle – this is my favourite; I saw this type of invitation somewhere years ago and ever since I wanted this type as our wedding invitation. Finally, we managed to create it (you can see it on the pictures below) :). As the name suggests the invitation itself is in a small bottle, a test-tube that is tastefully decorated with a bow, ribbon and/or small flower (that reflects the upcoming wedding too). Inside the bottle you can find the invitation itself – as only thin and easy-to-roll paper fits into this tube, only tracing paper or vellum is recommended here.

Continue reading about the best available wedding stationery papers and printing techniques in my next hub!

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