How to design invitations for any occasion

In fact, there are plenty of options that not only won’t break the bank—but they’ll reflect your personality to a tee. Here are a few tricks for designing invitations, based on personality type:

The no-nonsense type

You’re busy and you just need to get the job done. You don’t really have the time, or maybe you just don’t have the desire to create your own invites from scratch. The good news is: With all the free invitation design templates out there, no one will know your little secret! Choose from wedding, graduation and bar/bat mitzvah invitations, to holiday, birthday, bachelor party invites—and everything in between. After you download, you can open your professionally-designed templates in a Word doc, for example, then customize with your own message, colors and more. Print them on your favorite cardstock, put them in envelopes, add decorative stamps, throw them in the mail—and you’re good to go!

The champaign-on-a-beer-budget type

Want to create the perfect, star-worthy invitations, but you’re a tad low on funds? Don’t let that stop you! One way to create your dream invites is to find a style you already love—and use it as a source of inspiration to design your very own. You can do this by perusing info about celebrity weddings , if that’s your thing—or maybe Hollywood-inspired, red-carpet galas. Perhaps a royal wedding is more your style. If so, find out what your favorite princes and princesses chose for their invites and leverage ideas from that. Once you’ve narrowed it down, it’s time to get to work. An invitation app like Invitation Maker or Poster Maker , for example, is the way to go. Just find one that’s compatible with your operating system and design away. Look for invitation design features like:

• Plenty of filters and overlay options for stunning, creative touches
• Text that comes in many fonts and colors and that’s easy to add to your invitations
• Graphic design elements to embellish your invitations
• Ability to save and share with friends and family via email or social networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The unforgettable type

This is the “go big or go home” type. Someone who likes to leave their mark—or at least leave them guessing. So, run-of-the-mill invitations just won’t do, even if they are beautiful and well designed. You want to add that extra something that really reflects your personality. Here are a few examples of how invitations can showcase your quirky side:

• For puzzle lovers: Invitations printed on puzzles that guests have to “solve” in order to view
• For the young at heart: Save-the-date invites with colorful balloons attached. Hint: You write the event and date info on the balloon when inflated—then deflate before attaching (e.g. Kate & Alex 2/14/2023).
• For the hopeless romantic: Message-in-a-bottle invites, with the info printed on a card inside a tiny decorative bottle (it’s perfect for beach weddings/parties, too!)
• For the fanatic: Themed invitations that reflect your true affinity, whatever it may be, for example:
  • Disney lovers: Invitations that mimic your favorite things: Mad Hatter Tea Party, Alice in Wonderland, Pirates of the Caribbean, Mickey & Minnie and beyond.
  • The sports guru: Invites that look like real tickets to the big game
  • Music lovers: Get some old 45-rpm vinyl records from a second-hand store, create invites in the shape of record labels, and stick them on.

The organized type

You want to create unique invitations with personalized imagery that reflects you—or the people you’re creating the invitations for. Still, you don’t want to spend hours thumbing through photos. The cloud is the way to go! By having all your files, folders and photos in the cloud, it’s easy to download an invitation template into Word and then pull the images you need—all in one place. See if your cloud has a sharing feature that lets you create your own group, which will make it easy to get feedback on your invitations, or even ask others to share their own photos and albums. For example, let’s say you’re getting married in June and you’re creating invitations. You can create a group called “Roberto & Isla’s Wedding” and invite family and friends to join. You can ask for baby pics of the groom, couples pics or anything else you may need. You can even ask for feedback on invitation designs from your mom, sister, bridesmaids and more—making collaboration a breeze. Down the road, you can collaborate on seating charts and menus for the reception, the wedding registry, hotel and travel info for out-of-town guests and so much more. It really is a one-stop-shop for designing invitations and beyond.

Every personality type can benefit from the cloud, as it’s a great tool for keeping stress at bay, no matter what event you have coming up. Think of it as your go-to hub for designing and organizing—so you can focus on creating memories without breaking the bank.