Designing your invitations is one of the most exciting steps of the wedding planning process! From selecting the perfect design to match your wedding aesthetic to playing around with customization options, watching your one-of-a-kind wedding invitation suite come together is incredibly rewarding. However, as a stationery designer, I’ve found that many couples also encounter roadblocks. Are you struggling to land on a beautiful and functional design or stick to a tight budget? These wedding invitation tips will help!
Wedding Invitation Design Tips
Embrace Customization
Design a personalized wedding invitation suite—no cookie-cutter stationery here! Couples in 2024 and 2025 want customized designs that reflect their personalities, hobbies, and unique love stories. They love to incorporate elements like monograms, wedding crests, venue illustrations, and even custom artwork of their pets (and as an artist, I love doing this too!). If a fully custom invitation isn’t in the budget, a semi-custom suite is the perfect option for adding personalized touches while maintaining a cohesive design.
Read more about how I infuse my couples’ wedding stationery with personality! For the featured couple, we began with Turnage and Watts’ “Miss Louise” collection and made it their own with elements including a custom wedding crest and a vintage map of their wedding location.
Reflect Your Wedding Color Palette and Theme
Above all else, your wedding invitations should align with the event’s aesthetic. They should reflect the color palette and the overall theme—whether grandmillennial, minimalist, or nature-inspired! Think of them as branding for your wedding day.
Choose colors, fonts, and motifs that echo the look and feel of your venue and decor. For example, soft pink and cream tones evoke a garden wedding, while bold botanical patterns are perfect for a summer soirée. Optional elements, including custom envelope liners, unique die-cuts, and venue illustrations, are more ways of achieving this. See how we interpreted this styled shoot’s “citrus soirée” theme into colorful custom menu cards!
Prioritize Clarity and Functionality
Your wedding invitation suite should be beautiful, but practical. It’s important to balance design with functionality, ensuring all essential information is clear and easily read. Clean fonts and appropriate spacing will assist with this, enhancing legibility—especially for older guests. It’s best to save those intricate calligraphy fonts for information everyone already knows, like the bride and groom’s names! Plus, pairing decorative fonts with simple ones enhances your suite’s style and readability.
Using wedding websites for RSVP responses instead of snail mail has become very popular. This helps couples save on postage and the overall cost of their invitation suite, since there’s no need to purchase RSVP cards and envelopes or stamps for the envelopes. Still, printing a small number of RSVP cards in combination with your online response list can be helpful for your older guests, who may prefer snail mail. Consider printing 20-30 cards, depending on the size of your guest list and the number of older guests.
Don’t Forget About Postage
Speaking of postage, planning for the cost you’ll incur is important! Stamps are an often-overlooked but crucial component of your wedding stationery budget. Different sizes, shapes, and weights of invitations can affect postage costs, especially for unique designs including envelope liners, wax seals, or non-standard shapes (e.g., square invitations or die-cut details). So, consider this during the design process if you prefer to spend minimally on postage. If you’re planning to mail RSVP cards, don’t forget to factor the cost of stamps for those into your budget too.
Purchase ALL your postage from USPS—many counterfeit stamps are out there! We recommend going to your local post office with a sample invitation to receive an accurate postage estimate, so you can avoid surprises when it’s time to mail your suites. At that time, you can also grab the stamps you’ll need.
Explore Budget-Friendly Options Without Sacrificing Style
Even if you’re working with a tight budget, you can have beautiful wedding invitations that reflect your style! Your wedding invitation suite essentially costs as much per unit as you choose. Opting for cost-effective alternatives such as digital printing over letterpress or foil stamping, limiting the number of inserts in your suite, and a standard invitation size will all help reduce the overall cost. Moreover, consider opting for digital RSVPS over physical cards to cut down on printing and mailing expenses.
You’ll find a stunning selection of affordable invitation suites in our Zazzle shop, including the Wildflower Boho Botanical Wedding Collection and the Magnolia Watercolor Wedding Crest Collection! These suites offer elegant designs featuring floral and crest motifs at a price point perfect for budget-conscious couples.
I hope these wedding invitation tips assist you as you begin the design process! No matter your budget, creating a suite that reflects your wedding vision is possible—especially with the choice afforded by Turnage and Watts’ three design experiences. Whether you shop our Zazzle or work with me to design a semi-custom or fully custom suite, I’m honored to play a small part in bringing your wedding dreams to life. Let’s chat to discover which service best aligns with your specific needs!
