Printable Wedding Invitations

In today's economy, making & printing your own wedding invitations has become a very favorable option. Almost all of us have experience with home or office printers and have used Microsoft Word or another word processor. And once you've read LCI Paper's The ABCs of Printing at Home, you'll find that mostly likely, you already have the tools, information and resources you need make & print your own wedding invitations!

To show you how easy and fun it is, let's walk through the process of making your wedding invitations & printing on blank cards. I'll use sample products, invitation wording, and free printing templates from LCI's web site. You can do the same by ordering a few samples on our web site and completing the rest of the steps at home.

Envelopes

Here's my first piece of advice. Before you design and print your dream invitation cards, decide on your envelopes. You don't want to be stuck with a great invitation card that doesn't fit into a standard size wedding envelope or inner/outer wedding envelope set. Speaking of wedding envelope choices, now would be a good time to read our article, Wedding Envelopes: Lined, Double, Single - How To Choose? For today's invitation ensemble, I'm going to choose Double Wedding Envelopes. One of LCI's most popular double wedding envelopes are Tiffany size, where the inner envelope measures 8" wide by 5 3/4" high and the outer envelope measures 8 1/4" wide by 6" tall. The dimensions of the inner envelope are 1/4" less than the outer envelope. In the next section, you'll see that the invitation card should also measure 1/4" less than the inner envelope.

Printable Invitation Cards

As I mentioned at the end of the previous section, the invitation card should measure about 1/4" less than the envelope. In this case, since I'm using inner and outer envelopes, the invitation should measure 1/4" less than the inner envelope, since the card will be placed inside the inner envelope. Since I've chosen Tiffany sized double envelopes where the inner envelope measures 8" wide by 5 3/4" high, I'll look for a card that measures 7 3/4" wide by 5 1/2" high.

LCI sells a great kit called the Blank Wedding Invitation Hot Pink Frame with double wedding envelopes and an invitation card--all sized for a perfect match. You don't have to worry about the proper sizing because LCI has taken it all into consideration. I'll order a sample kit by clicking the Order Samples tab. You can see how it works below:

At this point, I can also order a sample response card and response envelope, because I want these items to be part of my wedding invitation ensemble.

Layout

LCI provides all the resources for printing blank invitations using your home computer and printer. Since I'm ready to work on my invitation card layout, I will download a free printing template for my invitation. I can download Microsoft Word templates for my invitation card and RSVP card right on the product page. These can be opened and edited in Word and in any program that reads Word documents like OpenOffice.org.

When I open up the invitation template in Word, I see sample invitation wording that I can tweak to my needs. More sample invitation wording can be found by going back to The ABCs of Printing at Home and clicking Sample Invitation Wording.

I am able to change the font, font size, and add my custom details. For this sample wedding invitation, I'll choose a casual looking font called Angelina. I think it will make the hot pink invitation look more fun and less formal. At this point, I could add any other design elements like a monogram or line art graphics.

Within Word, if I were to click File/Page Setup, I would see that inside the Paper tab, the document is sized at 5.5" wide by 7.75" high. I'll use these dimensions in the next section.

Printing

Once I've finished with my invitation wording and I'm happy with the layout, I am ready to send the job to the printer. I'll load the invitation card into the printer and move the plastic guides so that they're flush with the sides of the card. In Word, I'll click File/Print and choose my printer from the list. I'll click the Properties button because I need to communicate the size of my invitation card to the printer.

Under Paper Options, I'll go to Size and selected User Defined. I'll input the size of our document, 5.5" wide by 7.75" high. Now the printer knows what size card is in its tray. I can click OK and return to Word's print dialog box where I'm ready to send the card to be printed. A final OK, and the finished invitation is seconds from coming through the printer looking lovely.

Note: Every printer's driver is different, so the paper options might not be shown exactly as I've described above. Just poke around and find the paper size setting for "User Defined" or "Custom." If you don't see an option to change the paper size, you might need to download the latest driver from your printer manufacturer's web site so that this option will be available.

I can use the RSVP template to lay out my response card in the same way that I did with my invitation card.

Assembling

Once I've printed my response card, I can easily fold it along the scored line and place it under the flap of my response envelope. The response card, response envelope, and invitation card are placed inside the inner envelope which is then placed inside the outer envelope. For information about addressing your envelopes, read Kristen Desrosier's article, Addressing Your Wedding Invitation Envelopes: Traditional Guidelines and Helpful Tips.

Printing your own wedding invitations can be fun and rewarding. I've talked to many people that enjoy spending time exploring our web site and looking through all of the invitation cards and kits as they make their decision on what to buy. Once the invitations have arrived at your door, finalizing your invitation wording and laying it out in Word is a rewarding experience because you'll have designed your invitation and laid it out exactly as you envision it in your head. Finally, you can gather friends and family to help you assemble all the personalized pieces of your invitation ensemble.

Share your printable wedding invitations with us, we love to hear from our customers!

It's always helpful to be able to save some money here and there, especially in today's economic climate. Why not do so by printing your own invitations to your wedding or social event? Printing at home is a cost-effective and completely viable alternative to sending your invitations away to a professional printer. I asked our Vice President, Barry Levine, to weigh in with his thoughts on the subject. Barry has many years of experience working in the wedding industry with professional printers as well as with individuals doing their own printing.

Are there benefits of printing your own invitations at home?

Barry: "Number one, you have the freedom of personal creativity -- you're basically doing it at your own leisure. You're getting others involved: family members, friends, relatives. The bottom line is that it is also a cost-savings measure in my mind. Having been in the wedding invitation industry for so many years, I've had the opportunity to see what printed invitations from some of the major social thermographers are all about -- also having worked for a social thermographer for many years -- and I can say from firsthand experience that the cost of ordering printed invitations from a company such as these vs. taking on the task of printing your own invitations on blank stock [is cheaper]. The cost to the individual of printing their own invitations is really their time and whatever consumables they might use on their own printers that they're using at home."

Is home printing something anyone is capable of? Do you need any special equipment or training?

Barry: "Do I think that it's an easy task? I feel quite strongly about that [that it is]. I think that if we didn't, we probably wouldn't be in this business. I've consulted with many people on the phone, on how to go about doing their home printing, and, as far as special needed equipment -- there really is not any. Having a computer and a printer, and the ability to work with an application -- Microsoft Word seems to be one of the most common ones used -- and if someone is versed in using Microsoft Word, they should be very capable of setting up a custom sized document for home printing. One of the nice things about LCI is that not only are we here to sell a product for people to print on their own, but we're here to assist them in the long run on how to go about doing it. Now, we may do that in the form of resource content that we put on our website & blog such as how-to videos, Microsoft Word templates etc. Additionally, our in house designers have experience creating custom invitation ensembles and printing on those invitations. They are here to help those who call and are interested in doing it on their own."

Do you have any suggestions for someone who is considering printing their own invitations at home?

Barry: "Take your time in laying out the invitation, try to make good choices of type styles to be used, type sizes -- oftentimes it's nice to coordinate the use of two different type styles in an invitation. Make sure that if you are using multiple type styles that they're complimentary to each other. And oftentimes it's a good suggestion to have other people proofread your work -- have them take a look at it, ask them for their comments on design, have them check for spelling and punctuation. I've found that if I look at something too long, that I'm not always the best person to proofread my own work, so it's a good common practice to have others look at your work. And finally, before the actual printing takes place, I typically will suggest to people to try to cut stock -- waste stock or just extra stock that you might have on hand -- to the size of the invitation, and use that for setup purposes. Try not to use your actual invitation stock or your envelopes that you've spent some good money on, use setup stock that you don't care about. Make sure that all of your formatting comes out printed the way you anticipate it to. And then when you're finally happy with the way the layout is, and how it's printed, and the color of ink choice, then you're ready to use your final stock."

Lastly, are there any common concerns that customers bring to you in the home printing process?

Barry: "Some of the common concerns that customers might have when printing their own invitations -- I should say one of the most major concerns -- is: will the cards print on their printers? That particular concern is often a tough question for us to answer, because we can only give firsthand knowledge based on the experience that we've had with various printers. We've tried to test a few [printers] in the market, but it does not always encompass all printers. What we will do, on our website, is indicate whether a particular stock or envelope is suitable for either laser printing or inkjet printing, or neither in some cases. In most cases it will either be suitable for one and/or the other. However, there are occasional stocks that are so heavy that we won't recommend printing on them for home printing. They might be designed or more geared toward offest presses or letterpress, and we will indicate that with those particular papers. A lot of times people might be choosing stocks even though they can't print them on their own home printers for complimentary papers, for layers that they're going to use underneath a printed invitation. So we don't always know the purpose of why someone is purchasing a particular stock, but if we can help them along the way by giving them as much information as possible as relates to it's printability, then in the long run, it's more information for the customer and better reputation for LCI Paper."

With the benefits of home printing, you can take full credit for the beautiful invitations you make yourself. So save yourself some money and the stress of professional printing, and print your own invitations at home!