Before you get stuck in, you should consider some principles of design in your work. It’ll help you design your own wedding invitations with finesse and make sure the end result is just right.

Think about balance on the page
This relates to the arrangement of objects on a page and their positioning in relation to one another. Sometimes the objects may be large or small and then whether they are symmetrical or asymmetrical. These latter two elements are very important when thinking about the basics of design.

Symmetrical balance
When the objects are evenly balanced on the page this creates symmetrical balance. This can either be horizontally or vertically. Having symmetrical balance in your design would mean that one side of the image would be a mirror image of the other, or identical to the other side.

Asymmetrical balance
This occurs when the balance of weight between the two sides changes resulting in the objects being distributed unevenly. You could use different size objects though to balance each other on the page. Often you might find one large object supported by a number of smaller objects or a slightly off centre design supported with some other forms on the page.

Example of asymmetrical balance

Example of symmetrical balance

Create movement with rhythm
By placing objects next to each other, repeating patterns or alternating objects will create movement, texture or pattern. It’s often pleasing to the eye and creates more emotion then one single object. Rhythm in your designs can be regular, evenly spaced or more fluid.

Example of alternating objects creating movement

Example of coloured, regular pattern to create rythym

Proportion
Proportion is important as it helps to establish weight and depth, or size and distance. For example when the same two, but different sized objects, are placed on the page, the larger one will look as though it is closer than the smaller one. It allows us to create depth within a two dimensional space.

This is especially important for painters and artists, but probably not so important for invitations. It’s worth keeping in mind though when you design your own wedding invitations.

Dominance
Dominance works closely with proportion, but if you’re designing your own wedding invitations, this one is really important for you. Instead of trying to establish distance, like you would with proportion, dominance helps to define emphasis of a particular object on the page.

So you might have a dominant object, where the eye would be drawn to first, then a couple or several sub-dominant objects which might make up the middle ground of the design and finally the subordinate which would make the background. You could use colour, shape or size to create dominance.

Continuance
The idea behind continuance is that a design or layout on a page will continually guide your eye until something else captures its attention. These are usually strong directional lines that will move your eye around the page. A good example of this is the traditional perspective drawing, where the dominant lines draw your eye into the distance – they create perspective. Your eye is trained to follow the dominant lines as no other dominant objects get capture your attention.

You can use this technique to draw attention to your lines of text on your invite when you design your own wedding invitations.

Rule of thirds
For me, I use this one a lot as I really like it. The idea with rule of thirds is that compositions which have off-centre items are the most appealing. You can achieve this by dividing your page into thirds and placing objects on the lines that make create the thirds. You’ll see this a lot with my designs.

You don't have to make this exact, instead use it as a general rule of thumb when you design your own wedding invitations.

Visual centre
The visual centre of a page is usually just above and to the right of the ‘mathematical’ centre. You often see objects placed a little off-centre as it’s easier on the eye and in your wedding invitation designs you may find that this works for you as well.

A common example of this off-centre idea is framing. Photography for example, is always framed where the top, right and left hand side of the image is equal but at the bottom there is more space.

When things are centred, sometimes it’s just too much. A little off centre, usually a little higher than the centre point on the page, works.

Colour
Colour is extremely important when you design your own wedding invitations. Colour theory itself is a huge topic, however to get you started below is a colour wheel.

All the colours work together and usually always are made up of red, yellow and blue – the three primary colours. These colours can’t be created by mixing other colours.

You’ll also notice the secondary colours of purple, orange and green. These are created by mixing the primary colours. When used together, these are ‘complimentary’ colours.

Try to use colour to create harmony in your design. Too much colour or the wrong use of colour is too hectic and not enough colour could be deemed as boring.