Creating Your Own Personalized Wedding Invitations with the Experts at Bliss & Bone
Your wedding is one of the most personal, important days of your life—and your stationery should reflect that. With personalized wedding invitations, couples can order the exact type of stationery they want. There are so many factors that go into creating a personalized wedding invitation, and we are here to help you along your journey.
Throughout this guide, you will learn about the ins and outs of personalized wedding invitations. This includes the wording within them, choosing the most beautiful templates and much more. For more details about everything you need to know, read on about why couples love our personalized wedding invitations.
What Are Personalized Wedding Invitations?
Personalized wedding invitations are custom designs that have your and your partner’s personal touches. From the background design to specific text written on them, personalized wedding invitations prioritize your and your partner’s wants and needs for your stationery suite. As long as you can move things around and put your own twist on a design, that is reflective of a personalized wedding invitation.
While you can find inspiration from existing templates for personalized wedding invitations online, we love any opportunity to make a design truly stand out from the crowd. In addition to your must-have wedding details, you can also customize your personalized wedding invitations with three-dimensional objects, shadows and more unique elements.
Personalized Wedding Invitation Wording and Etiquette
How you share your big news is crucial when it comes to setting up the dreamiest possible atmosphere for your wedding day. You can opt for personalized wedding invitation wording that follows etiquette rules, or you can be more original with the text. Depending on your interests with this, there are wording constructions many couples gravitate toward.
For couples interested in etiquette-following personalized wedding invitation wording, here are the key features to include:
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An introduction from the host(s). Traditionally speaking, the hosts’ names will kick off a wedding invitation, and those are typically the bride’s parents. You will want to include their middle names and titles as well.
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The honour of your presence or the pleasure of your company. After sharing the hosts’ names, you want to share exactly what is being asked of your invited guests. “The honour of your presence” signals that the ceremony venue is a place of worship, and “the pleasure of your company” is common for all other venue types.
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The wedding couple’s names. If you are going with the traditional wording structure, and if the bride shares the same last name as her parents’, simply put her first and middle name. Then, write “to” with the groom’s first, middle and last name and title.
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Date and time of the ceremony. Next up, you want to provide even more details than your Save the Date shared. You should spell out the date and the year, and the day of the week and month should be capitalized.
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RSVP. Use any type of the acronym that means “Respondez, s’il vous plait.” RSVP, R.S.V.P., r.s.v.p. and more are all considered perfectly acceptable. This also signals to your guests that they will need to fill out a reply card or go onto your wedding website to submit their responses about attending your celebration. It is important to seek out personalized wedding invitations with RSVP to stay as organized as possible.
For a sample of a more formal personalized wedding invitation, see this wording construction below:
Doctor and Mrs. Frances Matthew Smith
request the honour of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter
Lauren Elizabeth
to
Mr. Corey Joseph Miller
Saturday, the twenty-ninth of July
[two thousand twenty-three]
at half after three o’clock
St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church
Newport, Rhode Island
and afterward at the reception
Castle Hill Inn
590 Ocean Avenue
RSVP
Even though many couples prefer to stick with wedding etiquette guidelines, you do not have to follow them if they do not align with you, your partner and your event. To customize your personalized wedding invitations even more, you may want to seek out unique phrases to include on your stationery. And for alternative personalized wedding invitation sample ideas, these include:
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Join us as Tess and Kyle walk down the aisle
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Together with their families, Vivienne Nash & Sebastien Kent invite you to the ceremony and celebration of their marriage
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Please join us as we celebrate the marriage of Madeline and Ashton
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You’re invited to the wedding of Carmella and Cameron
All of these personalized wedding invitation sample ideas are ideal for couples who want to be a little bit different and more original. However you write out your wedding invitations, you want to make all of the details as clear as possible. Plus, you should also include information about a wedding website, in case there is more information guests should check out there.
When Should You Send Out Your Personalized Wedding Invitations?
You need to give yourself enough time to design and order your personalized wedding invitations online. With that in mind, it is a general rule to send out your personalized wedding invitations about six to eight weeks prior to the big day. There are a few things you need to do beforehand, though. These are the items you should check off your list before you are ready to send out your personalized wedding invitations.
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Discuss your budget with your partner and any other “stakeholders.” You and your partner should sit down and have an honest conversation about your wedding budget. Understanding how much you both plan to spend on your venue and vendors is crucial, and you should also bring anyone else who has offered to help pay for your wedding into this discussion.
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Finalize your guest list. Evaluate your budget and how many people you should comfortably accommodate at your wedding. Your guest list should consist of the people you really care about and could not imagine getting married without. You should also keep in mind that 70 to 85 percent of your invited guests will ultimately attend your event, so plan accordingly.
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Explore different venue options. Once you decide where you would like to say, “I do,” start researching top venues in that area. From places of worship to hotels to dedicated event spaces, there are so many options to choose from all over the world. Think about the type of venue you love most, and then schedule tours of your top choices. If you have found “the one” and it fits your budget and aesthetic, submit your deposit to solidify your date.
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Design your wedding website. You can build a custom wedding website that features recommendations for what guests should do while they are in town, an RSVP section, photo gallery and much more. This is an extension of your stationery suite and should provide your guests with any extra details or insights about your wedding events.
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Customize your own Save the Dates. Around the time that you create your wedding website, you should also send out your Save the Dates. These go hand-in-hand because you can feature the URL to your wedding website somewhere on your Save the Dates. Most experts recommend that you send out Save the Dates six to eight months before your wedding—or even earlier. If you are hosting a destination wedding, for instance, you should get the information out to your guests at the earliest convenience. They will need to make travel arrangements to attend your epic celebration, so giving them enough time to organize their calendars is the best route.
By this point in your wedding planning timeline, you should get started on designing your personalized wedding invitations. Plus, you should also be specific about your RSVP requirements. Guests can submit a reply via a card you send with your stationery suite through the mail, or online. Personalized wedding invitations with RSVP information should also be specific about when to submit responses. Your guests should send back their responses by two to three weeks before you head down the aisle.
The Most Personalized Wedding Invitation Ideas
There are a variety of templates you can explore for your personalized wedding invitation, but the best part is customizing to suit your own specific taste and style. From special objects to alternative design options, you can review all of your options as you build out your personalized wedding invitations online.
To give you more ideas to try out on your own personalized wedding invitation template, here are a few of our favorite moves to make:
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Swap in an on-theme background: If you see a personalized wedding invitation sample that you love, but want to make a few tweaks, consider swapping out the background. From floral to desert plant accents, there are near-countless background designs that you can preview with your dream wedding invitations.
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Add your own photos: Personalized wedding invitations with pictures are among the most custom-made styles you can choose from. You can use images from your engagement photoshoot or another favorite of you and your partner to execute your own personalized wedding invitations with pictures. Or, you could opt for a sweet image of your furry family member or snap a shot of your venue.
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Incorporate unique three-dimensional objects and shadows: In addition to the unique imagery found in personalized wedding invitations with pictures, there are even more photos and graphics to bring into your design. From natural objects like pine cones to modern graphics or shapes, you can test out any type to bring more movement and dimension to your personalized wedding invitations online. Even more, you can also cast a shadow over your invitation that reflects your theme or venue.
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Start from scratch: If you cannot see exactly what you are looking for online, you can also create your personalized wedding invitation by starting out with a blank canvas. You can work from there to build out your perfect personalized wedding invitations. With the freedom to completely customize your own template, this is one way to ensure that it is a one-of-a-kind design.
At Bliss & Bone, our templates are made for personalized wedding invitation development. Couples are encouraged to look through existing templates, and put their own twists on them—or start fresh with the “Start From Scratch” feature. Talk everything through with your partner, do your research and then enjoy the creative process.
How Much Do Personalized Wedding Invitations Cost?
The word “personalized” may cause you to imagine more dollar signs and an increase in your budget, but that is not necessarily the case. For printed personalized wedding invitations, you can expect higher costs and longer processing times. Digital printing is the lower cost option, and even those will cost about $700 to $1,200 for 100 invites. Plus, personalized wedding invitations with RSVP cards will hike up prices even more, since a set of 100 insert cards ranges in price from $150 to $500.
For a lower cost option altogether, personalized wedding invitations online are also available and wide-ranging. In most cases, digital invites will run about $1 per virtual card. Because you are saving paper, you are also cutting costs significantly.
At Bliss & Bone, printed personalized wedding invitations start at $257.50 for 25 A7 (5 x 7-inch), one-ply cards, and costs go up with premiums like metallic foil and letterpress. Meanwhile, personalized wedding invitations online will cost $1.20 each for one to nine recipients, or $0.90 each for 10 or more.
How to Build Personalized Wedding Invitations Online
Now that you understand more about top ideas and costs for personalized wedding invitations of all kinds, we are breaking down how to actually build them. Using Bliss & Bone’s online builder, you can craft the ultimate personalized wedding invitations. By following every step, you will be well-versed in the process and more than prepared to make your own.
Here is our guide to building personalized wedding invitations online:
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Review the personalized wedding invitation templates available and click on your favorite option. You will then see your design up close and determine whether it is “the one.” If it is, click the “Customize” button, which will take you to the online builder.
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Make changes to the background. If you love the existing background on your personalized wedding invitation design, you can move on. However, if you are interested in testing out alternative background ideas, you can do so in the first two tabs on the online builder. From there, click on the “A” tab.
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Customize the text for your personalized wedding invitations. You can increase or decrease text size, change the font or font color, add a text box, adjust the alignment and much more in this section. If it looks good after your edits, click on the tab with the paintbrush icon.
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Update card effects and shadow overlays. This space in the personalized wedding invitation builder is all about dimension and movement. You can add a border or drop shadow in the “Card Effects” section, and you can change or add strength to the shadow that is cast over your personalized wedding invitations. After this step is complete, click on the tab with a series of shapes.
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Add in three-dimensional objects, illustrations and graphics. Bring even more to the table (er, invite) with objects like flowers, plants, rocks, letters, shapes and more. To move forward in the process, click on the “&” tab.
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Upload your logo or monogram. You can purchase a custom logo or monogram that you can use in your Bliss & Bone stationery and elsewhere. This can include your and your partner’s names or initials, wedding date and any other details or objects you can think of. You will work with one of our designers to craft your own special logo that you can use for practically any decor at your wedding. You can choose to upload your logo or monogram or not, and then you will need to click “Next.”
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Review your email setup. When you create a wedding invitation online, your guests will receive it via email. In this next section, you will review how the email will look on your guests’ screens. Afterward, click “Next.”
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Make selections for your Event Page. This step involves making specific decisions about how your Event Page is displayed on the card. If you are making personalized wedding invitations with RSVP, ensure that “Collect RSVPs” is toggled on. You can also make changes to how people respond to personalized wedding invitations with RSVP. The preset is “Will Attend” or “Will Not Attend,” but you can edit this section to be more customized. Here, you can also ask to collect addresses, include a note, provide extra details, feature an interactive map and more. If you are done with this part, click “Next.”
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Submit your guests’ information. In the “Recipients” section, you need to upload all of your invited guests’ names and email addresses. Just like with more formal wedding invitations, you will want to include all of the names for every household and just one email address. Verify all of the details and then click “Next.”
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Pay for your personalized wedding invitations and send them out. Once you input your payment details, click “Send” and prepare for the RSVPs to roll in.
You are only a few steps away from designing the personalized wedding invitations you have always wanted. The Bliss & Bone online invitation builder makes it easy to follow every step, and will tell you if you missed a required section. The best part of making digital personalized wedding invitations is that you can create and send them all in the same day. This is ideal for wedding couples on a time crunch or ready to spread the news to family and friends ASAP.
Get Started On Designing Your Personalized Wedding Invitations Today
With this guide, you should feel empowered and excited to make your own personalized wedding invitations. From understanding your wedding timeline to reviewing beautiful templates, there is a lot to do with your stationery suite. If you ever have questions or concerns about your personalized wedding invitations, please feel free to contact us online or email us at hello@blissandbone.com.