DIY Wedding Invitations

When you purchase DIY Tuxedo Wedding Invitations from LCI Paper, you'll receive invitations and double lined envelopes. The invitations arrive scored and flat, ready to be printed and folded.

Setting Up Your Custom Invitation Wording

To personalize your invitations, you can start with LCI's free template for Microsoft Word. It is available in two styles--with names on the front flaps or without. Right click on the following links to download the templates to your computer.

• Invitation With Names on Flaps
• Invitation Without Names

For this example, I used the "Invitation With Names on Flaps" file and changed the fonts to my liking. As the tuxedo is traditionally a formal garment, I wanted my tuxedo invitation to use formal fonts. I used a different font for the names on the flaps than I used for the center panel.

You can customize your template to the invitation look that you envision. Don't forget to save the edited template file so that you can come back to it later.

Printer Setup

Within Word, if you check File/Page Setup, you'll see that the template is set up with a width of 14.5 and a height of 7.75. That is the size of the unfolded invitation. You'll also see that the orientation is set up in Landscape mode as opposed to Portrait. We will use similar settings in the print driver which is the software that controls the printer. Access your printer's particular driver within Word by clicking File/Print, then select your printer and click the Properties button. Since print drivers differ by printer make and model, your print driver may look different. Just poke around and find the specific settings described below.

We need to change two settings in the print driver. First, the paper size. Choose "Custom" or "User Defined"--whatever the case might be in your print driver.

Since we will be feeding the invitation vertically into the printer, enter 14.5 as the height and 7.75 as the width.

Second, since we want to print our invitation wording horizontally, set the orientation mode to Landscape.

That's all! You are set to print your custom invitation wording on the Tuxedo invitations. We recommend that you feed each invitation one at a time into your printer so that your printer doesn't grab more than one as it's feeding the invitations.

Folding and Embellishing

All that's left is to fold your printed invitation.

Perhaps you'd like to embellish your Tuxedo invitation with a Black Chiffon Ribbon. Plan for one yard of ribbon for each invitation. Our 7/8" Chiffon Ribbon is sold in 100 yard rolls.

Recommended Links:
DIY Tuxedo Wedding Invitations
Free printing templates for invitations

At LCIPaper.com, we have a Share Your Creativity page where we encourage our customers to submit their invitations and other creative projects so that people can be inspired by their creativity. Recently, Shannon in Pennsylvania e-mailed me her story and photos of her custom wedding invitation that she had designed using LCI Paper's metallic pocket folds and metallic card stocks. I talked to Shannon about her foray into DIY invitations and her upcoming wedding.

To save the audio to your computer, right click and "save as."

Here is a transcript of the interview:

Next year, yep. I'm making my own invitations. I'm a teacher so it makes more sense for me to get it done this year because I'm also writing my thesis in the fall and so I really won't have much time from August to January. It's filled with research and studies and all that crazy stuff, and writing, so I figured I've got to get done as much as possible now. So I actually planned my wedding within, I'd say the last month.

Ok

Yeah, but it's been fun!

So there are certain clues that I'm gathering that kind of indicate to me that you've made invitations like this before or you've done this sort of crafty project.

Well, I am very crafty in the sense that I teach kindergarten so I guess you really have to be. So I love to do hands on activities. And when I went to go and buy invitations, to go pick them out, because I went back and forth, at first I was like, "I'm going to make my own invitations." Then I was like, "No. You know what? For $500-600 I don't mind. I'll buy them."

Then I went online and they just got uglier and uglier. I feel really bad saying that but nothing that I wanted. So I told my fiancé, "You know what? I'm going to call a graphic designer."

So I called about five or six and got quotes from them all. And they all quoted me—for the invitations I made for like $3 off of LCI—they were charging between $12 and $15. And that was an invitation. And I was like, "Oh my lord! I can't pay that because it just doesn't make sense. I made up this mockup of exactly what I wanted and I made it for $3 and you're telling me that you want to charge me $15? That's just never going to happen."

So I just went with the fact that I was going to make my own invites; make them exactly how I want them and, you know, I've got the time so that didn't really play a huge part in it. And they were a little bit more personal since I made them myself. So I feel like I have a little more pride in giving them to people knowing that it's something that was homemade.

Yes, yep. A couple unique items about your invitation that you've made up: You used one of our pocket folds—the black one, the Serious Metallic Pocket Fold—and you aligned it horizontally so that folks will kind of open it up horizontally as opposed to vertically.

In my mind I had an invitation that didn't have a flap, so even when searching for invitations that don't have flaps, graphic designers were the only ones that would do it. But it starts of horizontally because I really wanted the ribbon and the detail on the front and you couldn't do that with a vertical invitation. But then when you open it up, I had to do it [the invitation card] vertically because not all the wording would fit horizontally. So it sort of gives it a nice twist. You sort of just open it up like a book and there's all of your response card and reception card, direction cards on the left and then your actual invitation on the right. I'm not quite sure why I did it. It just made the most sense to do it that way.

One of the other unique features about your invitation is the name card on the back. Do you want to tell me about that?

On the front part when they open it up?

Front, yeah. Well, the opposite of where the fold would have been—the opposite side, the back side.

Oh I'm sorry. It would be the back side, you're right, and on mine it's the front. The name plate actually I just made in Microsoft Publisher. I also searched the web for curly Qs like calligraphy curly Qs to put in there. The one web site I found, they were really great. But then again, I didn't want to pay money for something I didn't have to. So actually, the design throughout the whole invitation, like those name curly Qs, is Edwardian Script. And they're just flipped on its side. So it's like the "&" symbol and then it's just Edwardian Script and I just wrote "Shannon & Joseph" and then underneath that I just placed the "&" symbol and I flipped it on its side and then "August 14, 2010"—that's when we're getting married—and then mirrored the image of the "&" symbol on the other side.

I actually had all the cards printed at Office Depot because it saved me some time and they have an industrial laser printer to print everything. I had the actual name plate printed and then I just sized it to how thick I wanted the Mountain Rose [border to show] in the background and glue dotted it onto the front and then cut it and glue dotted it onto the organza ribbon on the front.

Ok. And now that you're nearing completion, what advice would you give to people in your position about trying something like this themselves—if they're not a kindergarten teacher already.

Honestly, it really isn't that hard. I mean if you go and you purchase everything, design it on the computer which isn't hard because it's just Word and Publisher documents, do it yourself, get it to the measurements that you want it, and then take it over to say, Office Depot. They'll print everything and cut everything for you. And then it's as simple as putting it all together.

And a lot of the web sites with the invitations that you purchase for like even $300-400, you have to assemble yourself anyway. So, I mean really, it just comes down to you might have to be a little techie but it's really not hard at all. So I would definitely suggest that anybody... I'm sure graphic designers and invitation people probably don't want to hear this, but it is so easy to do it yourself.

And the LCI web site actually, with a lot of the How Tos... I'm making my wedding program off of one of the examples that was on the How To part. I mean just really, really easy. And it's just picking a script that you want. I mean I dedicated one night to this project and that's what I said because I was teaching summer school and I said, "I have to give myself one night." And I completed the whole thing in one night because you get real excited about it. So I would definitely suggest to anybody that you can do it. And even make it a whole wedding party affair like have your bridesmaids over to help you assemble them all and just start an assembly line and go ahead down.

Me and my fiancé were really pleased and we searched different paper web sites because originally, I really wanted a square invitation and then after I designed this one, I was like, "I can't even look at square invitations anymore." So I really liked the rectangle. We had just a fun time assembling it so I'm really happy that you guys liked it.

We do. We are really happy that you submitted it and we'll feature it.

Great! Ok, that would be awesome.

Thanks so much.

Thanks so much Josh. Have a great day.

You too.

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I hope Shannon's story inspires people who might be on the fence about making Do It Yourself invitations. And Shannon, thank you for submitting your one-of-a-kind invitation to LCI Paper. If you'd like to hear stories from other people who have designed their own invitations, subscribe to our podcast.