So it’s been 2 months since I wrote my last blog post on how to cope with wedding planning during the COVID-19 pandemic, and boy have things changed since then! If you read this post, you’d know that we weren’t very hopeful for our wedding in September this year to go ahead, and we were looking at a plan b. Unfortunately that plan b has become a reality and we’ve now had to reschedule for next year. What a nightmare that has been!
Nevertheless, we’re glad we now don’t have the uncertainty of whether the wedding can go ahead as planned or not looming over us, and now have a bit more time to plan the little extras and save more money. Thank goodness I didn’t spend huge amounts of money on my wedding invitations for our original date, because now we have to do it all again!
To help those of you who may be in the same position as us or to those of you who are planning your wedding for the first time and need some ideas for your wedding invitations, heres a guide on how I made ours for under £250. Just to put it into context, we had 180 invitations to hand out. Here are the steps I took:
1. Create the design for the invite
As a marketing executive, I’m always looking for tools that will help me create beautiful graphics and recently came across a neat graphic design platform called Canva.
You don’t need any knowledge of graphic design to be able to use this platform; it’s really simple. You can either use their own pre-made editable templates, or create a design completely on your own which is super easy with its drag and drop functionality. There’s tonnes of wedding invitation templates already available for you to edit straight away. You can fully customise the size, colours, fonts, images, number of pages and much more.
As I use this tool for work on a daily basis, I decided to create my own template. After a few weeks of playing around with the wording and fonts, we finally decided on one design. If you aren’t a regular user of this type of software, I’d recommend starting with one of their templates and editing from there. It’s important to get the sizes of the design right as you need to consider the sizes of envelopes for your invites. For instance the “Wedding Invitation” templates are 14cm x 14cm meaning they can go in 14.6cm x 14.6cm envelopes which is a standard size for a square envelope.
Here’s how mine turned out…
Tip: Make sure the font is no smaller than 11pt otherwise it will be too small to read. Also try not to use fancy fonts on important details of the invite eg addresses, as they can sometimes be unreadable.
2. Download your design in a printable format
If you use Canva to create your design, you can select the option to download your design as a “PDF Print” and tick the box to include “crop marks and bleed”. This is what the person printing it will need in order to print and trim your invite to the correct paper sizing.
Here’s what mine looked like with crop marks and bleed as an example…
Tip: Try not to put anything too close to the edge of your invite as it may get cut off when it goes to print. When downloading your design, use the crop and bleed marks to see where your content comes up to. This will be your indication of where the paper gets cut when it gets to the printer.
3. Send your design to a printer
As I have to get collateral printed on a regular basis for work, I sent my design to a printing company I use through work called The Maltings Studios.
However, if you don’t know of a printing company or don’t have any local to you, you can upload your design directly to a website like Vistaprint and choose how many you would like printed and on which type of paper. The price will vary depending on how many you need and the type of paper you choose.
Tip: Avoid using silk paper as this may be too flimsy and thin. I’d recommend uncoated or pearl paper and no thinner than 200gsm.
4. Order envelopes (if they don’t come with the prints)
As I stated in step 1, it’s important to consider the size and shape of your design to ensure you can get an envelope that fits them. Whatever size your design was, the idea is to get an envelope that is around 5cm bigger. The invites I created we’re 16cm x 16cm so I got envelopes that were 16.5cm x 16.5cm. I ordered these from Amazon from a company called Cranberry Card Company which were really good quality and reasonably priced.
Tip: If your invitation design falls outside of the standard sizing of a general invitation, you may have to do a bit of searching to find the right size at a good price, but you will find them eventually.
5. Jazz the prints up
I originally wanted to get my design printed with some foil so it had a metallic feel, however this almost doubled the price. If you find that you can get some foiled or pearlised ones on Vistaprint, then you may not feel the need to jazz your wedding invites any more. However, I felt mine needed something else so I decided to stick them onto some rose gold card as a substitute to the foil.
I luckily had access to a guillotine at work so cut the card to size. My design was 14.8cm x 14.8cm, so I cut to the card to around 15.5cm/16cm so that they’d fit in a 16.5cm envelope. I then got some pritt stick glue, a bottle of wine and my mum and stepdad, to help me stick the invitations onto the rose gold card. Here’s the end result…
Tip: If you would like to stick your prints onto some sort of backing, I’d recommend using double sided tape or foam pads so that they have a stronger hold.
I hope this blog post has given you an insight into how you can make your own wedding invitations. Even more so if you are on a budget too! Due to my profession, it’s something I always wanted to do myself and to be honest, I didn’t want to spend vasts amount of money on them as they only end up in the bin afterwards. I also made us a wedding website for the RSVP which saved alot of money.
It’s not for everyone, but I wanted to say that I’d made something for my wedding as I don’t think I will be able to make anything else (we are expecting around 350 guests for ours so I don’t quite fancy making x350 of anything lol!). It doesn’t matter if they aren’t the fanciest because nothing can take away the proud feeling of saying I made this for our special day.
See below a breakdown of the products used and how much everything cost…
Products & Pricing:
Invite printing – The Maltings Studios – £100
Envelopes – Cranberry Card Company – x4 packs of 50 £21
Rose gold card – Dovecraft – x18 packs of 10 £45
Stamps – Royal Mail – x100 2nd Class Stamps £65
Discovering Difference 