You’re engaged and in the beginnings of the wedding planning process – Hooray! This is such an exciting time for you and your fiancé. While there are so many incredible details and fun elements to plan out for your wedding celebration, it can also be a little overwhelming at times. We know, we’ve been in your shoes!

We’re here to help guide you through the stationery selection process, and help you decide what will give your wedding a true branded style. Meaning, your wedding day will be a true reflection of you as a couple, along with infusing it with elements that are most important to you both.

When you start looking for wedding invitations, there are so many elements to think about. Before starting our search, it’s important to iron out these details:

Once you’ve decided on your color palette for the wedding, it will give you a starting point for selecting your wedding invitations. You’ll want to tie in your wedding colors in many aspects of your invitation – from your paper and envelope selections, to your envelope liner, to your invitation embellishments (wax seals and silk ribbon, for example). You’ll also want to select an ink color for your wedding invitation printing that best coordinates with your wedding color scheme.

Your Style

There are so many wedding styles out there, so it's important to narrow this down from the get-go. The most popular wedding styles are modern, rustic, traditional, simplistic, elegant, and luxury. Or perhaps you are planning a hybrid of styles! This day belongs to you, so be sure to reflect that.

It’s so important that your wedding style is reflected in your wedding invitation suite. It will set the tone for your big day and relay to guests what’s in store for your big day. Are you having a contemporary wedding at a big city, high-rise venue? Or perhaps an elegant barn wedding? Or maybe you’re planning an intimate affair at a private family estate. Whatever style your wedding day conveys will be factor into guests’ attire, transportation and travel arrangements, childcare, and even weekend plans surrounding the wedding day.  

If you’re working with a custom designer for your wedding invitations, they will be a huge help in guiding you through this part of the invitation selection process. They will have many suggestions as to what design elements and embellishments will best convey your wedding style through your wedding invitation suite.

Number of Guest Households

In order to properly provide an accurate pricing estimate for your wedding invitations, your invitation designer will need to know the quantity of invitations you’ll need. It’s important to remember you’ll need one invitation per household, not one per guest! Don’t make the common mistake of ordering twice as many wedding invitations as you’ll actually need.

Create an Excel spreadsheet of your guests – this will allow you to populate their addresses as you obtain them, and keep a running tally of the household count. Once you feel your guest list is complete (or close to complete), you can move forward with the wedding invitation ordering process.

For the final ordering quantity, we recommend adding 10-15 extra to your final household count. This will give you enough extras to keep on-hand in the event of returned/damaged/lost invitations, last minute guest list additions, and keepsakes. Also, don’t forget to provide your photographer with 1-2 invitation suites! They will want to snap some pretty flat lay photos of your wedding invitation suite, alongside your wedding day details and florals.

Projected Wedding Invitation Investment (Budget)

It’s incredibly important to have a budget planned out for your wedding invitations, before proceeding with the invitation design and ordering process. This will help your custom designer determine what invitation types and elements will be the best fit for you and your desired wedding invitation investment.

As a wedding invitation designer, that last thing we want to do is to show you lots of options that are ultimately outside your wedding invitation budget. We want to help you find that perfect wedding invitation balance of beautiful AND affordable! =)

Photo Credit: Kaylee Creighton Photography