Wedding Guide 101: Choosing A Wedding Invitation & Making One
Choosing the right wedding invitation is a time-consuming deal. A lot rides on this choice. After all, in many ways, the wedding invitation is going to be the first impression of your wedding – an event you want to be eternally memorable.
But alas, so many options! Fonts, colors, shapes, sizes, paper types, styles, and designs – there are seemingly infinite options in every piece of a wedding invitation.
Other than the cost of your wedding invites, you still need to worry about the cake, photography, location, bridesmaid dresses and more. Some of which you might need a wedding loan to cover.
Don’t fret. We’re here to solve your problems and take away your woes so you can focus on more pressing matters.
Follow this guide and you will arrive at the best wedding invitation for your wedding automatically. How magical is that! Just like your wedding, you bet.
Colors
Colors can create a lot of psychological impacts.
Warmer colors are usually preferred for weddings but there isn’t any rule. Do you like something in sky blue? Then go for it. Remember, the wedding invitation is an extension of the wedding. It’s also a part of yourself. You shouldn’t have to adhere to any rules and regulations.
Rose pink, teal, turquoise, purple, red, orange, yellow, fawn, etc. are all great colors to go for.
Artwork
Wedding invitations can’t just have text. That’s a time long gone past. You need to choose a design that offers artwork or some other fancy design elements. Now here again, you have multiple choices.
Choose illustrative artwork. Don’t get your photos printed on the invitations – that’s a wastage of space. On the other hand, also don’t keep it text-only.
Use a design that has minimal but effective symbolism, iconography, or digital illustration of some kind that resonates with the theme of your wedding or weddings and love in general.
Legibility
You need to double-check that everything is properly readable. Often, when you see something for too long, you become oblivious to some of its mistakes or shortcomings and you instead start fixating on something else entirely.
That’s why you should get your wedding invitation tested by showing it to your close friends and family first.
If they come up with any readability or legibility issues then take heed. Excusing that especially small font size because you only had that much space isn’t the way out. Trimming the text and getting it redone in a larger font size is the ideal way.
If a wedding invitation goes out while being hard to read then it doesn’t truly create the perfect invitation. Remember, everyone from kids to older adults will be looking at it. The text has to be large enough for everyone to make it out without much effort and at the same time, without being too big or in-your-face.
You’ll find that goldilocks zone, we know!
Breathing space
Where so many of us go wrong is giving details. We write words and then add some until the whole piece is one big overloaded piece of paper. You want to avoid that.
Keep plenty of breathing space or white space around your main details. Separate things from each other. Your name shouldn’t immediately be followed by the date. There has to be a space separating grouped information.
And in general, as well, there has to be plenty of empty space (or light artwork) all around the text, details, and designs. It gives a luxurious and neat look.
A busy or crowded wedding invitation tires the reader’s eyes. People don’t like things that tire them.
Consistency
The design of the wedding invitation has to be thoroughly consistent. It has to be built around a single theme. You can call this factor the design scheme.
Just like the Guo Da Li ceremony in Singapore, it has to have a consistent theme. If you’re wondering how to hold a Guo Da Li ceremony, you can read our in-depth guide here.
For example, if each other line is a different color and different font size then it just makes the invitation incoherent. Incoherent wedding invitations don’t portray the information in the best and fastest way.
The wedding invitation needs unification.
All the different elements from the text, artwork, and background to any icons, patterns, borders, pictures, or separators need to follow the same design scheme or theme.
If you lose consistency, people lose interest in your wedding invitation. It’s such a small detail that many ignore it. You understand it now (hopefully) but when you threw others’ invitations into a pile collecting dust, you didn’t know why you did it. Or more specifically, why did it fail to please and attract you, so that you could sit holding it in your hands a few more seconds, all the while thinking, “Wow.”
Hint: It was the lack of consistency.
Paper types
There are so many fancy paper types to choose from. If you wish to stick to the very basic, regular paper for wedding invitations then know that you’re not in the wrong here.
The paper’s quality, however, sure decides the type of feeling your invitation will have once it is in the invitee’s hand.
Here are the options you have:
1. Normal cardstock: This is the typical high-GSM paper. Everything else listed here is an improvement over normal cardstock.
2. Felt cardstock: Felt is slightly thicker than your average card stock.
3. Linen: Linen papers look great and are pretty cheap. No compromises on the quality here.
4. Handmade paper: The main USP of handmade paper is that it’s recyclable and environment-friendly, but what we’re more interested in is its quality to stand out and give that “unique” feel to everyone who received wedding invitations made or printed on handmade paper.
5. Cotton fiber: This paper is quite inexpensive and gels well with all types of colors and printing.
6. Matte: Matte paper has a matted look, which means it has no shine. It’s hard to imagine why would anyone choose a shine-less paper to print their wedding invitation on. That is until one actually sees a card printed on matte paper. Matte works well with darker colors.
7. Glossy: Glossy paper is the opposite of matte. It’s extremely shiny and reflects plenty of light. Anything printed on glossy paper has a beautiful touch to it.
You can also go with recycled paper if you wish your wedding to be more environment-friendly. Also, you can use vellum. Vellum is a see-through material. It can be used as a cover on your wedding invitation to give it a luxurious feel.
You need to go to a shop and choose the paper type you feel is the most suitable or luxurious while well within the budget.
Costs
The cost of the wedding is usually the biggest concern for couples. With a limited budget, it might be hard to fulfill all their wedding goals. For some, getting a wedding loan helps to solve this problem. They begin by using a wedding loan calculator to find out how much the rates are.
The budget is either the most or the least important thing depending on your perspective.
It’s generally a good idea to set a budget first and then go shopping for wedding invitation designs and paper. Once you have a budget that you cannot cross you will find that hunting for the right invitation becomes remarkably easier. How?
– You will be ditching anything that’s significantly lower than your budget, as a result saving yourself from cheaper materials and designs. If you don’t have a budget fixed, you have the urge to imagine your wedding invitation in everything you see.
– You will also be ignoring stuff that’s above your budget, helping you save the time lost on looking at the wrong things that you don’t wish to afford for your wedding.
In conclusion
Sure, there are even more considerations. But once you have this information under your belt, you are now better equipped to make decisions regarding the type of wedding invitation you will have.
If everything works out well within your budget, it’s now time to think of wedding card add-ons such as foils, embossing, envelopes, enclosure cards, wax seals, address labels, laces, customized stamps, and postage.
When your plan falls out of your budget, you might need the help of a wedding loan. Apply for free and get multiple wedding loan quotes via our sophisticated system.
