Layout Considerations When You
Make Your Own Wedding Invitations

When you make your own wedding invitations it's important to ensure that your invite is easily readable. More often than not, it's easy to go overboard with the design, rather than considering whether your guests will easily be able to read your invite. The layout, spacing, fonts, size of text and colours should all be taken into consideration and this article shows you exactly how.

First and foremost when you make your own wedding invitations your primary concern should be legibility. You want to ensure that your invites are as easy to read as possible, especially for your older guests. To get an idea of what’s a good layout, the best place to look is at professionally made wedding invitations where care is given to the layout and typography of the invite. Some of the better websites that sell wedding invitations include Wedding Paper Divas and Debenhams, so have a look around.

There are several things that you should think about when you make your own wedding invitations, so in no particular order, here’s a quick run down (there's further detail below):

• Choose a clean, clear font that’s easy to read
• Don’t make your font too big or too small
• Mix up different styles of font sparingly, such as bold, italic, non-italic, sizes, caps or no caps
• Consider your line spacing to make your text easier to read
• Ensure they’re a good contrast between text and images when the text runs over the image
• Ensure there’s enough clear space between text and image when the text is next to the image

Fonts

When it comes to text on your page, fonts are probably the most exciting thing there is! A font can say a thousand words, literally. It not only provides the way to communicate with your guests, it sets the tone for your wedding. So choosing the typeface you use is really important.

I’ve pulled together my favourite fonts for wedding invitations so you can see what the most popular fonts look like. There are a mixture of modern, traditional and script fonts – each one giving a different feel to your wedding invitation.

With fonts, it’s important not to go too crazy with making them bold, italic, caps and no caps. Sometimes a little variation in the size and weight of the font looks okay, but if you put in too many it can be begin to look messy and become illegible. Remember, the most important thing is that your all guests can read your invitation clearly.

Example of a poor layout. Too many different styles of font and different sizes make it difficult to read.	Example of a good layout. Consistent sizes and styles make it easier to read.

Font sizes

When you make your own wedding invitations, be careful not to go too big or too small with your font size. The best size for the font, depends on the purpose of the line of text. A headline for example would be bigger than body text and a footnote would be much smaller still.

Different fonts also require different sizes. For example, Scriptina, a popular, modern script font only works well when it’s at a large font size. It’s therefore great for headlines, but not so good for body text.

As a rule of thumb, use size 12 or 14 for your body text and a large font size for your headlines. Your headlines might be your greeting, such as ‘wedding invitation’, ‘I do’ or ‘Come and celebrate’.

There are also minimum font sizes you should be aware of as well. For most fonts, the minimum size to ensure legibility is size 8, smaller than that and some people will find it difficult to read the text.

Spacing

Spacing on your wedding invitations is very important. The use of ‘white’ space or clear space is often used to draw attention to certain elements. For example, you might find that there is often extra clear space around the names of the couple getting married. The reason for this is to ensure that the names stand out as the most important information on the page.

Spacing between the lines of text is also important. How wide you should go really depends on a number of factors like font size, typeface used, amount of text and position. More spacing such as 1.15, 1.25 or 1.5 line spacing will usually make the text easier to read, especially if you’re using all caps. It’s best to experiment with what works for your layout.

You can also adjust the spacing between your letters in most desk top publishing packages, including Microsoft Word. Again, this can draw attention to certain areas of text and increase legibility. You can find this setting in Home> Font> Character Spacing of Microsoft Word 2007. So when you make your own wedding invitations, have a play with these functions.

Images and text

Images can be used to add a visual element to your invitation and the balance between the text and the image is important. When you make your own wedding invitations, follow these two simple rules.

If you’re putting text over an image, then make sure there is enough contrast between the two so that it’s easily readable. The second rule would be if you’re placing text next to an image, give the text plenty of space as this will draw the eye to the text and make it easier to read. Don't put it right up against the image as it's difficult to read.

Considerations when using your home printer

The final thing to say is if you make your own wedding invitations and then print them off at home, make sure you leave enough space around the edge of the invite for the standard margins. For my printer, this 0.5cm, but for other printers it may be different. So check your own printer.

If you’re designing your own wedding invitations, you can find out more about the fundamentals of design in this article.

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Card Making Techniques For Beginners
Tips For Making Your Wedding Invitations
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Making Your Printable Wedding Invitations Unique
Design Basics For Wedding Invitations