Invitation Design and Your Event Venue

One of the most difficult tasks in the event planning process is deciding on a color scheme. Where does one start? Most people will start with a favorite color, choose based on the season, or might even choose a scheme they saw in a magazine and just really "liked". Or maybe it's blue to announce a new baby boy.

Something to consider when deciding on your final color scheme is your event venue. What colors are included in the room/tent/hall? For an outdoor wedding at a country club, the greens of the grass would be a potential color element you could tie into your scheme. For an event at catering hall or restaurant, most have some sort of paterned, colorful carpet from which you can also pull color ideas from. Using your venue for color inspiration can really help create a cohesive design that your guest will remember.

Here are some examples of invitations and the event decor they belong to for inspiration.

An Outdoor Wedding in Colorado

An Asian Wedding in San Francisco

A Loft Wedding in Brooklyn, NY

A Wedding at an Arbouretum

Determining Your Stationery Budget

Before you can start creation of your dream event stationery package, you first need to determine a budget. If you're doing a low-key, family oriented event, you usually want to get away with spending as little as possible (so DIY would be the best option for you). For important events like weddings, most people figure on 3% of their total budget to go towards their stationery.

So that means on the average $26,232.00 brides spend on their weddings in the United States, $786.95 would normally be budgeted for stationery.

Considering how in most wedding magazines save the dates showcased average anywhere from $500-$1,000 for 100 (cards and envelopes) and invitations cost sometimes double that, it's no surprise majority of brides go the DIY route and make invitations and stationery themselves. However, with the right tricks up your sleeve, it's easy to make an invitation that is designed just like the fancy ones you see in the magazines. Trick is you save money on printing, assembly and paper stock in efforts to afford a good designer.

Now that you have your budget, contact Invite Couture today to see how we can help you create the invitation package you're looking for at a price you can afford!

Where to Find Cool Fonts and How to Load Them

Hundreds if not thousands of people go the DIY route when it comes to making invitations for their event. With many more chic paper options on the market today that are inkjet printer friendly, it's now easier than ever to make your own.

When going the DIY route however there is one stumbling block that will hamper your creativity: boring fonts. Most people will design their invitations in an easy to use word processing program like Microsoft Word. The only issue with Word is it comes pre-loaded with some of the most boring fonts on the planet.

There are several totally free websites that have a multitude of cool and fun fonts. A few of them include:

• 1001 Free Fonts- my personal favorite.
  
• Dafont.com
  
• Urbanfonts.com
  

Granted, there are hundreds more than the 3 above I just mentioned. Just google "free fonts" and you'll see there are tons for you to sort through.

So after you find a font you like the next step is to download it and load it into the "fonts" folder for your Microsoft Office. The directions as follows are for if you have a Windows computer.

1. First download the necessary font for your operating system (Windows or Mac) via the free fonts website of your choice.




2. When your computer prompts you as to where to save the file, save it to your desktop. (Note: you could save the file anywhere that's easiest for you, I just find the desktop to be easiest)



3. Usually, the file will be in some kind of compressed format on your desktop (i.e. Winzip, etc). You'll have to use a 3rd party software to unzip the file. To make things easy, when unziping the file select "extract to here". The file then will successfully be on your laptop.




4. Next go to start > Control Panel > Fonts. The Windows Font Folder will then open. Then take the font file from the desktop and drag and drop it into the Windows Font Folder.

1. Ta-da! You have successfully loaded your first font into your computer for use with Microsoft Word (or any other Microsoft program for that matter). Next open Word and enjoy creating a your own design!

Corrine & James- Final Stationary

Below are some finished samples of the invitation and stationary design work I did for my very own wedding.

Inside of the Invitation

Invitation Close Up

Close-up of the inside of the Program

Menu

Program Closed

Basket of Programs

The Save the Dates

Corrine & James- Preliminary Designs

When designing the stationary for my own wedding, I had a few design elements that were important to me to incorporate. I wanted my design to be:

1. Elegant
   
2. Modern
   
3. A Touch of Art Deco (to compliment my wedding venue, Oheka Castle in Huntington NY http://www.oheka.com/).
   

I had initally right off the bat in planning the wedding chose a color palatte of black, white, red and gold. I felt this scheme both representated myself and my husband as being edgy (red and black) yet elegant (white and gold). It also complimented the wedding venue as well as the season (Fall).

When choosing my stationary, due to budgetary constraints I knew in order to get the quality, textured paper I wanted I was going to have to cut costs on the printing end. So I decided to do everything with black text and graphics on white paper. One color printing is a fraction of the cost of full color (which uses 4 inks).

Next step was choosing the fonts that I wanted to represent my event. In this case I did some research on some recommended "Art Deco" fonts and finally settled on Goldenbook as my basic text font. I wanted to use a cursive font for anything I wanted to showcase, like our names on the invitation. My husband and I had decided we wanted to have a wedding website, and we chose Wedding Window as our vendor. Being a design snob I felt they had the best designs and the easiest to use interface. I found a beautiful website template that showcased all of my already chosen wedding colors, and the site used a beautiful cursive font called Sloop Script Two. So I thought, what better way to incorporate my pre-made cookie cutter website design into my stationary design! So Sloop Script Two ended up being my cursive font of choice in this design.

I managed to design and produce Save the Dates, a 5 piece Invitation Ensemble, Programs, Menus, Table Numbers and Escort Cards and get them all produced for the same price I was initally quoted for invitations alone by a fancy stationary shop in the NYC area. I even used the exact same paper/envelopes as the stationary shop, so I got a super, high quality design and cut the costs down dramatically.

Below is a sampling of my preliminary design work for my wedding stationary suite.

Profile- About Me

I'm Corrie Feld and I'm a newlywed (October 4th, 2008!) who is a marketing specialist and graphic designer. I like many brides was very frustrated after stopping into many boutique invitation shops in the New York City area to get quotes on my invitations. In particular, I was horrified at how much the boutique "couture" shops wanted to charge me, even though I was basically providing them with a print-ready design!

I was determined to get my "dream design package" and I wasn't going to sacrifice quality. I took good notes while at the stationery shops and knew the quality cardstocks and envelopes I wanted, and I devised a unique way to get my not only my invitations, but my save the dates, menus, programs and escort cards done with the same, exact boutique quality (on the stock they offered!) but for the price I was quoted on only my invitations!

I've started Invite Couture so I can help brides get the same, couture quality invitations you see in the bridal magazines and still stay within your budget. My blog provides a place for me to provide tips, techinques and ideas for brides starting their invitation creation process. I also use this site to showcase my own invitation designs.


I look forward to hearing from you to start creation of your dream invitation design project!