My first wedding invitation draft in Affinity Publisher

[ClarityDynamic]

Hi everyone!

I’m designing my very first wedding invitation in Affinity Publisher 🤗 and would love some feedback from the community. I’m still very new to this and have been researching many different resources/sites on proper wording and layout styles. There’s a ton to learn, and I might be up all night for the next week working on it!

I’ve attached my work-in-progress—any suggestions on layout, typography, colors, or overall design would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Jeremy 

 

 

[SolidSnake2003]

Good job

[weegiegrum]

Looks pretty good. If I was being uber-critical, I'd maybe suggest making the names font a couple of points larger as it's getting a little lost in amongst the other text.

[Alfred]

11 minutes ago, weegiegrum said:

I'd maybe suggest making the names font a couple of points larger

Seconded. And shouldn’t it say “wedding” rather than “marriage”? Either way, “request” and “at” don’t need initial capitals any more than “with” does.

[carl123]

What time should we get there?

[GarryP]

This might be culturally-dependent but in most ‘Western’ cultures it’s more usual for the bride’s name to come before the groom’s name (because the bride’s family is normally paying for the wedding – it’s ‘her big day’), and sometimes for the bride’s name to be without her unmarried surname (if her surname will be changing once she’s married).

Aside from that, I might be tempted to try a version where the “Together with...” text was off to the top-left and with the where/when information off to the bottom-left, giving more room to make the rest of the text larger. It might not work well but it won’t take much time to give it a try.

[dannyg9]

17 hours ago, ClarityDynamic said:

Hi everyone!

I’m designing my very first wedding invitation in Affinity Publisher 🤗 and would love some feedback from the community. I’m still very new to this and have been researching many different resources/sites on proper wording and layout styles. There’s a ton to learn, and I might be up all night for the next week working on it!

I’ve attached my work-in-progress—any suggestions on layout, typography, colors, or overall design would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Jeremy 

 

 

It's almost there and the concept is great. Here's my take: Together with their Families, Request the honor..., and the address should all be the same point size and weight (Smaller). The names should be larger and stacked (they're the stars of the show!) and the Date should be larger as that's primary information as well. The font choice is up to you and very subjective but I would lean more towards the script you chose for their names but not use that font throughout. Experiment a bit. Add about 6 pages to your document and then copy and paste the entire design onto each page. Then you can mess about with the fonts on each individual page until you find the right combination without losing something you might like. Much easier to compare the choices this way too.

I've included a few samples I've created over the years. They're not all wedding invites but I think you'll understand in regards to the sizing. Hope this helps.

 

JaneInvite2000.pdf LindsayMoskoInvite.pdf BodineFarewell.pdf

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, dannyg9 said:

Here's my take: Together with their Families, Request the honor..., and the address should all be the same point size and weight (Smaller).

As I mentioned in my previous post to this thread, I don’t think “Families” and “Request” should have initial capitals.

7 minutes ago, dannyg9 said:

the Date should be larger as that's primary information as well

As @carl123 has indicated, the time isn’t specified. That’s “primary information”, too!

[dannyg9]

50 minutes ago, Alfred said:

As I mentioned in my previous post to this thread, I don’t think “Families” and “Request” should have initial capitals.

As @carl123 has indicated, the time isn’t specified. That’s “primary information”, too!

True, true, all true!

[ClarityDynamic]

19 hours ago, weegiegrum said:

Looks pretty good. If I was being uber-critical, I'd maybe suggest making the names font a couple of points larger as it's getting a little lost in amongst the other text.

I will make this adjustment, thank you

19 hours ago, Alfred said:

Seconded. And shouldn’t it say “wedding” rather than “marriage”? Either way, “request” and “at” don’t need initial capitals any more than “with” does.

Correct, thank you for pointing this out

10 hours ago, carl123 said:

What time should we get there?

I will add the times, thank you 

7 hours ago, GarryP said:

This might be culturally-dependent but in most ‘Western’ cultures it’s more usual for the bride’s name to come before the groom’s name (because the bride’s family is normally paying for the wedding – it’s ‘her big day’), and sometimes for the bride’s name to be without her unmarried surname (if her surname will be changing once she’s married).

Aside from that, I might be tempted to try a version where the “Together with...” text was off to the top-left and with the where/when information off to the bottom-left, giving more room to make the rest of the text larger. It might not work well but it won’t take much time to give it a try.

I do like the bride's name first I will make this adjustment. Also, I am working on a different concept with the 'together with' text off to the left side

2 hours ago, dannyg9 said:

It's almost there and the concept is great. Here's my take: Together with their Families, Request the honor..., and the address should all be the same point size and weight (Smaller). The names should be larger and stacked (they're the stars of the show!) and the Date should be larger as that's primary information as well. The font choice is up to you and very subjective but I would lean more towards the script you chose for their names but not use that font throughout. Experiment a bit. Add about 6 pages to your document and then copy and paste the entire design onto each page. Then you can mess about with the fonts on each individual page until you find the right combination without losing something you might like. Much easier to compare the choices this way too.

I've included a few samples I've created over the years. They're not all wedding invites but I think you'll understand in regards to the sizing. Hope this helps.

 

JaneInvite2000.pdf 355.34 kB · 2 downloads LindsayMoskoInvite.pdf 2.42 MB · 2 downloads BodineFarewell.pdf 44.51 kB · 3 downloads

Excellent I love these templates thank you for sharing  And I will make sure all the text size is adjusted correctly 

[Petar Petrenko]

Beside others suggestions, I will add that this job is primarily for Designer not Publisher.

[PaulEC]

25 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Beside others suggestions, I will add that this job is primarily for Designer not Publisher.

Why? What is the advantage of using Designer over Publisher for this job? (If you have both you could just switch to the Designer Persona in Publisher if you want to, but if you only have Publisher it's not worth buying Designer just for this!) 

[ClarityDynamic]

2 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Beside others suggestions, I will add that this job is primarily for Designer not Publisher.

I'm curious - why do you think Designer would be the better choice? I hadn’t really considered that I’d be working primarily with vectors and building the invitation from scratch, but that makes sense. Would Designer offer more flexibility or better tools for this type of project? I’d love to understand the advantages!

[Petar Petrenko]

49 minutes ago, ClarityDynamic said:

I'm curious - why do you think Designer would be the better choice? I hadn’t really considered that I’d be working primarily with vectors and building the invitation from scratch, but that makes sense. Would Designer offer more flexibility or better tools for this type of project? I’d love to understand the advantages!

Well, Designer is like Adobe Illustrator and has much more vector (and pixel) based tools than Publisher and is heavily used for one or two page designs. Opposite of this, Publisher's (like InDesign) main purpose are books, magazines and other multipage materials.

[Petar Petrenko]

2 hours ago, PaulEC said:

Why? What is the advantage of using Designer over Publisher for this job? (If you have both you could just switch to the Designer Persona in Publisher if you want to, but if you only have Publisher it's not worth buying Designer just for this!) 

I don't think it will be his first and, in the same time, last design he will ever make. Maybe for this purpose Publisher is enough, but some other designs he will create in the future could be more complex and will need more specific Designer's tools which are not a part of Publisher.

[ClarityDynamic]

15 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Well, Designer is like Adobe Illustrator and has much more vector (and pixel) based tools than Publisher and is heavily used for one or two page designs. Opposite of this, Publisher's (like InDesign) main purpose are books, magazines and other multipage materials.

That makes sense! Since I’m mostly working with imported vectors and focusing on layout and typography, Publisher seemed like the right fit. If I were creating the design elements from scratch, I can definitely see how Designer would be the better choice. Honestly, I was just excited to use into Affinity Publisher for the first time - had to put it to good use! lol. I appreciate the insight!

[PaulEC]

In the future he may well need Photo as well, as that has many more pixel tools than Designer! 

[Petar Petrenko]

32 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

In the future he may well need Photo as well, as that has many more pixel tools than Designer! 

Depends on him, how much pixel based tools he will need.

[AlanPickup]

I did this A6 invite recently for a 60th Birthday party in Publisher, the main benefit was being able to use data merge and make every invite personalised then printed 4 to view on A4 photo paper using the data merge to create 120 individual invites from a list provided. 

Party Invite Landscape).pdf

[ClarityDynamic]

On 3/10/2025 at 4:21 PM, AlanPickup said:

I did this A6 invite recently for a 60th Birthday party in Publisher, the main benefit was being able to use data merge and make every invite personalised then printed 4 to view on A4 photo paper using the data merge to create 120 individual invites from a list provided. 

Party Invite Landscape).pdf 104.88 kB · 3 downloads

That is beautiful and customizing them was brilliant. I would definitely attend the party lol  

[ClarityDynamic]

SO....

I posted my first wedding invitation draft a little while ago, and the feedback I received was incredibly helpful - so thank you all for that! Since then, I’ve been having way too much fun playing with affinity publisher, and I think I might be officially addicted. 😆 This creative process definitely is a lot of work but it's fun. 

This time, I tried out two more wedding invitation designs and even experimented with mockups (which, to be honest, I’m still figuring out how to use properly). 😅 I know these aren’t perfect, but I’m really enjoying the process and working on improving with each design.

I’d love to hear what you think! How did I do with these mockups? Any tips for making them look more polished? I know I still have a lot of work ahead, but I’m excited to keep learning!

Looking forward to your thoughts - thanks again for all the great advice so far!

 

@dannyg9 Yes I am taking your advice and experimenting with different designs. 

 

 

[PaulEC]

These are all good designs and mock ups, I particularly like the first one. Well done!

Only one thing, I've never seen the time expressed as "Eleven O'Clock in the afternoon" before. To me 11 o'clock is either in the morning (am) or in the evening (pm). (Having said that, I'm in the UK, maybe it's different elsewhere.)

[AlanPickup]

Agree good improvement, one thing to watch is using strong background colours under text as it makes them hard to see, especially for anyone with a sight related problem.  On a grammar point, albeit I am the last person who should comment with my strong northern English dialect, the middle card should say "as we begin" as the invite is from them starting with "We"

[GarryP]

1 hour ago, AlanPickup said:

On a grammar point, albeit I am the last person who should comment with my strong northern English dialect, the middle card should say "as we begin" as the invite is from them starting with "We"

I’m not entirely sure about that myself.

The card is about Courtney and Matthew’s wedding but the card is not necessarily from them directly as the wedding is (often) being paid for and 'enabled'/'facilitated' by the bride’s parents and, technically, they are the ones making the wedding happen and sending the invite, e.g. We are inviting you to our daughter’s wedding (oh, and that bloke will have to be there too I suppose).

Otherwise it sounds to me like the recipient of the card would be part of the “as we begin our forever together”.

I’m not an expert on such things, but that’s just how it sounds to me. I'm sure there will be various etiquette guides on the web somewhere that can help with this sort of thing.

[wonderings]

The only real person you should be asking is the Bride. I hate doing wedding anything, be it cards, rsvp's, envelopes, whatever. There is generally no one as critical and fussy as a Bride. This is from years of experience working in print. There is no right way of doing it, only what the client wants and I have found few actually want to follow my advice and go for something they have seen elsewhere. 

All that being said I can say that most are going to want the bride and grooms name much much larger. It is a focal point of the invitation, it is their day and they want you to know it. With their names, again I have found they usually go for with an ampersand between the names. Jill Smith & John Brown. 

Wedding invitations are generally very trendy, people follow what they see online that is making the social media rounds.