There is nothing more exciting than telling all your friends and family about your newly minted engagement. Once you get passed the initial “OMG I’m engaged!!!” phone calls, you will start planning, and before you know it, that “new car smell” on your engagement ring starts to fade…
But don’t worry! It comes right back again with each milestone you reach in the planning process! The first of these steps, is sending out your save-the-dates.
MJ and I chose to save a few bucks by designing and printing our save-the-dates by ourselves. I must admit, we both have professional graphic design experience, but you don’t need THAT much know-how to do this yourself!
Here are some simple steps that will walk you through the process:
1. Brainstorm & pick a design
Before you even start this process, you should know what your wedding theme is going to be. This is a feat in itself, and not something I will try to tackle in this article.
courtesy of: sheilasimmington.com
Quick tip: Designs with a photo background are a super simple way to create a professional-level product, with beginner-level skills!
courtesy of: weddingwindow.com
You need to know your wedding theme, because these save-the-dates will be the first impression that you get to make on all your wedding guests, and will set the stage for everyone’s expectations of what’s to come!
Don’t freak out though, this sounds like a lot, but I’ll help you through it! Keep reading…
2. Choose a color scheme and feature font
The color scheme should match that of your wedding celebration… so that part is super easy. As for choosing a font, first, do a Google Image search for designs that you like. Find a few, and see what they have in common. Do they have bold text? Maybe a background photo? Simple text-only design? Figure out what you like. (Considering this is a DIY project, try to keep things within your means though… don’t expect to make a Mercedes when you have the tools for a Schwinn!)
courtesy of: savethedates.com
Once you have a color scheme and general design, the last thing you need is a feature font. Try sites like dafont and fontspace to find something that matches your theme. Follow the site’s instructions to install the font on your computer.
3. Choose your printer
I know this sounds weird, because you haven’t even made anything yet. But you need to know the limitations you are working with. Consider things like:
- Size of the paper you will be printing on
- Style (folded, one sided, two sided, cardstock, etc)
- Quality (matte, glossy, thick paper, etc)
You can print at home, use commercial printers like FedEx Kinkos, or even a box store like Walmart or Target (they literally do everything!), or use sites like vistaprint, or 123print.
All these things will affect the file you need to create and send to the printer. Make a note of everything you choose!
4. Open your favorite document editor
Most people have Microsoft Word, so I’m going to work from that for the sake of this post. If you have something else, feel free to use that as well!
The first thing you need to do is set your paper size to the size your printer needs. You can do this in Word using the “Page Layout” tab.
Quick Tip: if you are going to print at home, make sure you leave at least a .25 inch margin around the outside of the document, because your home printer most likely won’t be able to print any closer to the edges of the paper.
(There are tricks to get around that though… let me know if you’d like to hear them!)
Next, using your inspiration pieces, create a design that reflects your wedding’s style. Use text boxes to lay out the text, as the standard “in line” text in Word likely won’t be able to replicate your creative design.
courtesy of: indulgy.com
Make sure you use the feature font sparingly! It won’t be “featured” if you use it for every bit of text on the card!
Quick Tip: For the most emphasis, use the feature font on your names, the wedding date, or other high impact text. Use a totally different font for everything else.
The key to a good design is surprising…. keep it SIMPLE. It doesn’t matter if your save-the-dates are modern or classic, country or contemporary… all good designs are SIMPLE! So when you go DIY, don’t push the limits of your skills, work within the capabilities of your resources, and you will make something awesome!
courtesy of: contemporarybride.com
Have questions? Want more details into a particular step? Let me know in the comments!
-Brooks
