Wedding Invitations 101: A Quick Lesson in Printing Techniques

The Wedding Guru Judy Lewis fields this week’s wedding questions. Today: A quick lesson in wedding invitations and printing techniques

They say your invitation sets the tone for your wedding because it’s the first thing your guests see. Depending on your taste and budget, you can choose the type of printing process that suits you.

Dear Wedding Guru: “I really want to make a good impression on my guests, but I’m totally confused about the different printing processes out there. Can you give me a short lesson?”

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Dear Hudson Valley bride: Glad you asked! There are three basic types of printing techniques:

The first is the engraved invitation. When you run your finger over the type, you can feel the raised printing. It’s the most formal — and most expensive.

The second technique is thermography. It has the same feel as an engraved invitation, but it’s not quite sharp. It’s less expensive then engraving and widely used today.

The third technique is offset printing. This is the most common form of printing and the type used for books and magazines. In this technique, the letters aren’t raised away from the paper; instead, the printing is flat (which makes it less expensive-looking). The good news with offset printing is that images and complicated artwork are manageable, where they would not be with engraving or thermography.

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For the budget-conscious, invitations can be printed from your own computer. Besides the savings in cost, the advantage of home-made wedding invitations is that you can choose from any number of fonts — and when (if) you make a mistake, you’re not reducing the number of invitations you have in a set. Just print out a new one! That means that you can’t ever really run out of invitations.

An important note: some paper stock lends itself better to one type of printing than to another, so be sure to deal with an experienced, professional printer who’s familiar with the different techniques and paper stock. A commercial printer should be happy to give you recommendations and show you a printed proof so you can see how the type looks on the paper you’ve chosen.

Wedding Invitations 101: A Quick Lesson in Printing Techniques

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