How to Design Wedding Invitations With Photoshop

The wedding invitation is your first chance to set the tone for the big day.

Wedding invitations present an ideal place for the bride and groom to display their style and tastes, and to give their guests a feel for what the wedding will be like. Not only do invitations inform everyone of the date and location, they can also give them an idea of how formal the event will be, and what kind of celebration they can expect. Designing your own invitations will give you a perfectly blank canvas to work with, where you can create your invitations exactly as you envision them.

Things You'll Need

• Computer
• Photoshop
• Wedding Invitation Cards
• Printer

Instructions

1. Select a set of invitation cards from a craft store. Blank invitation cards can be purchased completely blank, or with a border or design intended specifically for weddings. Most wedding invitation sets will come with invitation cards as well as smaller RSVP cards and envelopes for both the RSVP cards and the invitations. If you want to include additional cards for information such as the hotel, flight suggestions or directions, you may need to purchase these separately.

2. Measure the size of the invitation cards, as well as the space that you have to work with within the card. For example, if you have a card that is 5 1/2-by-8 inches, but there is a 1-inch border around the edge, you will only have a space of 4 1/2-by-7 inches to work in.

3. Open a canvas in Photoshop and set it to the same measurements as the available space on your invitation card. Create a text box on the card and enter the wording that you want to include on your invitation. If you want to add graphics or other designs, add these as well. Creating a custom design of your initials intertwined or a graphic associated with the theme of the wedding can give the invitation a very personalized look. Save the canvas when you have created your invitation.

4. Open a second canvas in Photoshop and set it to the same size as the whole invitation card. If you do not have a border or other design on the card that you are working around, you can skip this step. However, if the previous canvas is smaller than the whole card you will need to create this larger canvas. Then, copy the previous invitation and paste it onto the larger one. Center the information on the larger card so that there is ample room around the edges for the border printed on the invitation cards.

5. Cut out a piece of paper to the same measurements as your invitation cards, and mark the location of the border or other pre-printed graphics. Use this piece of paper as a sample to print out your invitation, see how it looks, and determine any necessary changes. Print out your invitation on the sample piece of paper. When you select print, be sure to change the paper setting on your printer to the measurements of the invitation card.

6. Make any desired changes to your invitations and continue printing samples until you are satisfied with the look of the invitation. When you have finished fine-tuning your work, you can proceed to print out the invitations on your card paper.

Tips & Warnings

• If you prefer to use Photoshop to create a wedding logo or graphic only, you can create the actual invitation in a program such as Word by setting the document size to the size of the invitation and the margins to the size of the border. You can then type in your wedding information and insert the Photoshop graphic into the Word document.

• Make sure that your printer has plenty of ink before you begin printing your invitations so that the graphics do not begin to fade with subsequent printings as the ink begins to run out.