Source
r/weddingplanning•
4Paws

I want to create and print my own invitations but I'm clueless. Help?

So, here's the deal. I have tasked my very artistically talented mother with designing and calligraphing our invitations. My first issue is that she is going to hand draw/paint/calligraph the artwork and text, so it's not automatically a digital file that can be uploaded. We have a scanner at work that I can use to scan it to a PDF, or will the quality not be good enough and I'll need to have it professionally scanned? Is there any particular type of paper my mom should use for her original art? And is there a standard size for invitations? Initially we were thinking of doing it on a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper but now I am realizing that might be weird, and might not work with the inserts that have to with the invitation. I was hoping to use Vistaprint for the actual printing because they seem economical. Anyone have any experience with this?

Posted Mar 19, 2015, 5:20 PM UTC

710
CapnMApril 11, 2015 | NV•

5x7 is a standard size and they fit in A7 envelopes. A standard scanner should work, but put it on the highest setting. You can edit the image after it's scanned to touch up any areas.

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poopyponyBay Area | summer 2016•

I'll throw my 2 cents in:

I helped my sister with her invites, which she watercolored herself. She sent me the original watercolor. I scanned it in at max resolution for my scanner (not sure off the top of my head what it was). It was probably not necessary to have the resolution so high, but it was nice to be able to scale without worrying about pixelation.

Once scanned, I pulled it into PhotoShop to cut out the background and save it as a .png with transparent background. I was pretty meticulous about zooming in and removing all traces of the background paper. I wanted to make sure that no matter what color paper her invites ended up being printed on, there was no ugly color mismatch because part of the background wasn't removed.

Finally, I sized it to 5x7, saved it as a .png, as noted, with transparent background. She used Zazzle to print her invites (they run Groupon specials fairly often, which I found for her). She uploaded the image and then used Zazzle's editing functionality to put in the text.

I'm going to do something similar but I will be using Costco, which, without a coupon is almost as inexpensive as the Groupon Zazzle deals (which you kind of have to "hack", anyway). Costco has an option to design your own.

Hope that is helpful!

4
EnilenifWedding Cruise!!| July 30•

I'm a graphic designer and I run a printshop.

Vistaprint is cheap, but sometimes you get cheap quality and things will come out misprinted and crooked. They're good about fixing things, but sometimes that's extra hassle you just don't need to deal with, not to mention time consuming, even if its a few extra days. A local printer could help you keep your costs down and also offer suggestions on different paper and envelope types. They can also help you get your art scanned properly and at a nice resolution, and make sure everything will print well, and can probably show you a printed proof first. You definitely won't get that kind of quality control ordering online.

A good standard size is 5"x7", which fit in standard A7 envelopes. A standard RSVP card is 4.25"x5.5", and fits an A2 envelope. But really, you can do anything with invitations - we did one that folded into a square shape & envelope!

3
4PawsOP8.15.15 NoVA•

Would Fed Ex/Kinkos or Office Max/Depot be appropriate? Or would you recommend going somewhere like this? There are like a gazillion businesses that come up if I google "print shop near me" so it's a little overwhelming (much like all of wedding planning). Cost isn't a huuuge issue, I think we can choose options paper options that aren't too pricey and we are only sending about 40 invitations (~80 people).

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EnilenifWedding Cruise!!| July 30•

Kinkos/Office Max will rake you through the coals on pricing. They also don't consistently have nice customer service, unfortunately. The Minuteman Press would be a good option - that's a franchise printing company (similarly, so is Alphagraphics). They'll be a little more personal with you!

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riotousgrowlz9.6.15 - Minneapolis, MN•

I really like CatPrint for online printers. Our save the dates were really high quality and they were really responsive to my questions. The free paper sample was really helpful.

And they offer 10% off if you show a $10 donation to a local animal shelter/rescue.

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SuperiorHedgehogBride | Married! | Santa Barbara, CA•

Scanning: You should be fine if you scan at around 300 dpi. Most home scanners, in my experience, are totally fine for scanning and re-printing, you just have to make sure you're set to scan at a high resolution.

Size: You're basically constrained by envelope sizes, but there are a couple of those that would work. You could head over to cardsandpockets.com and look at their sizes. (I also highly recommend them as a source of envelopes).

Paper: For you mom, I'd just have her do it on white paper. Other than color it shouldn't matter.

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accentadroite_bitch01/23/2016 NH/MA•

This isn't quite advice on "how" to do it -- I'm pretty clueless in that department -- but my #1 piece of advice would be to triple check what you write and have several others check it. Before ordering mine online, I had my MOH, FH, and one of the bridesmaids check them for me, as well as me looking them over three separate times. We just got a Save-the-Date for another couple in our circle of friends and they put that they were "GETTNG MARRIED"... :) I know this seems like a no brainer but better safe than sorry!

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4PawsOP8.15.15 NoVA•

For sure. I do a lot of writing for work and it's always my fear to look at a big project after it has come back to the printer and distributed to 180,000 people. There's always some little thing that no one caught!

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BabysInBlackNewlywed - Vancouver, BC•

We did our own invitations, we didn't need to scan anything but I used a program called Publisher and it was great. I liked the idea of our invites being a single piece of card that was exactly the size on an envelope. We had the details on the back which worked out nicely. I've written a more detailed explanation with a photo here. I do design cards at work and try to scan in the highest resolution possible such as 600 dpi.

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