With a dizzying range of contemporary wedding invitations on the market today it’s difficult to know where to start when selecting your invites. It’s important to remember that this is the first indication to all of the theme and tone of your wedding. You probably wouldn’t have a traditional country style invite for a minimalist modern city wedding.

For contemporary wedding invitations there’s something for everyone and for those unsure where to start a few simple choices will help narrow the selection down.

Colours and Seasons

Let’s start with colour as this seems a good starting point for most couples. The choice can seem daunting, but perhaps more straightforward once you consider that bridesmaid’ dresses or floral arrangements can be one of the first considerations for a colour scheme, glimpses of which may then be interweaved throughout the day. For example, a rose pink and spring green could be incorporated into your wedding stationery once softened with white or ivory. The bridesmaids could then be showcased in rose pink, with floral accents throughout the day in pink and green, i.e. f rom buttonholes and handheld arrangements to favours and reception flowers.

Consider the seasons when selecting your wedding stationery. Spring would be the ideal time to incorporate a fresh spring green, and summer lends itself to beautiful shades of cornflower blue. Warm tones in gold and burnt orange suit an autumnal theme and berry red against a snow white card hint at a wintery wedding. A little bit of subtle sparkle also works for a Christmas theme. Should you not wish to relate your invitations to a particular season, then popular choices are classic black and white, or a stylish cappuccino shade.

Once a colour has been selected you can start thinking about the style of your invitations. The wedding ceremony and reception venues could both lend some ideas. For a traditional church ceremony you may want something more straightforward, but for a civil ceremony you may wish for a less ornate invite.

Font Style

Fonts may be adapted to suit the personality of the occasion and with hundreds to choose from there’s something to suit all tastes. From richly ornate to the more minimalistic of fonts, there are plenty to select from. One way of treading the middle ground to good effect is to select an ornate font for the first letter of each word and a simpler font for the remaining letters. This gives sufficient interest to the front of your invitation without becoming overly ‘flowery’.

Wording

The etiquette of invitation wording can often become a difficult point when deciding how to put together the actual text required. One point to bear in mind is that the wedding invitation will generally be addressed from the hosts themselves, so decide if you require your invites sent from the Bride and Groom, or from one, or both sets of parents. For families that may have extended families involving step-parents etc. the hosting can be more complicated, but any good wedding stationery will be able to offer advice in this area.

Budget

Budget is a major consideration for most couples and if you consider the scope of invitations on the market there is something to suit all, from off-the-peg invites where date, time location etc. is handwritten by the hosts, through to bespoke individually handcrafted invites where every detail can be amended to exact specifications. The invitations are truly an indication of the type of wedding you have been invited to, and also serve as a keepsake, so their importance should never be underestimated.

All the above offers guidelines only. There are ultimately No hard and fast rules as long as the wedding stationery meets your requirements. There is always scope to do something unique or contradictory. For that laid back sunny beach wedding why not have a traditional invitation with intricate script and pretty ribbons. Or alternatively introduce your own theme, such as the 1920′s theme, a New York socialites wedding or a Las Vegas Casino theme. The world really is your oyster.

In today’s economic climate planning and paying for a wedding can be a nightmare. Even the basics such as wedding invitations can cost a substantial amount of money, if you are feeling adventurous and have a creative side why not design and make your own. Most people these days have all they need at home to create something special. If you have a good printer and the right software then you are most of the way there

Software – Have You Got What You Need

Most computer systems are bundled with some kind of word processor software these days, whether it is Microsoft Works or Word, or Mac Pages. If you have more advanced software such as Microsoft Publisher then all the better, if you have none of these then you can always download OpenOffice, the free office productivity suite. So long as you can set custom page sizes, have a multitude of fonts to play with, and the software can position text and graphics where you need them then you are all set software wise.

Printers – Resolution is King

There are many good quality printers on the market today, and many that are only fit for printing text documents. Years ago your bundled printer was more likely than not to fall into the latter category, in recent years this is not the case.

If you plan on just adding text to the card, and then embellishing it with ribbons or some other adornment then 720dpi would be fine. 720dpi I here you say, why do I need that much for text. Not all card stock is created equally, if your dot size is too big you are likely to get bleeding, ink running away from the text and so giving a pour results. Also the smaller the dots the greater gamut of colour variations you can print successfully.

If you are going to print graphics straight to the card then 1440dpi would be the nirvana, but 720dpi should produce acceptable results depending on how complex the image.

Card Stock and Insert Paper

There are many companies out there that supply card blanks and insert paper, a lot depends on what you are looking for and how much you need. Craft Creations is one company I can highly recommend, but you can find many by searching on Google.

For card stock I would go for at least 180gsm, anything less and your cards will buckle in under their own weight and not look good. Insert paper can be whatever you think looks good, some websites sell insert paper cut to size for their cards. Myself I prefer Ryman’s white laid paper; this has a nice textured finish and at 100gsm isn’t too flimsy, another issue to watch for with insert paper.

How to Begin

1. The first step is to set up a custom paper size for your card, measure your card height and width unfolded and set this as a user defined size in your printer preferences. Don’t forget to give this a meaning name so you can find it later.
2. Next open up you word processor and create a new document, setting the page size to that of the custom size you defined in step 1. Divide the page in to 2 columns and adjust the centre spacing so that it is twice that of the page margins.
3. Hit Enter until the cursor is in the second column and draw a text box. Type ‘Wedding Invitation’ or whatever you want in the text box and set the font size and colour to your choosing. You will want some interesting font for the front of your card; some good ones to get you going are Vivaldi, Monotype Corsiva, Mistral or perhaps Margaret. Depending on what you are going to do with the rest of the design, place the text box wherever you need it.

The rest is up to your imagination, so enjoy making your wedding invitations.