Invitation Card Maker

How our invitation card maker works

An invitation has two jobs. It has to tell people when and where, and it has to make them want to come. Most of the work in making one is the first job: getting the wording in order, fitting everything on the card, and doing it again for every guest. Our invitation card maker does the layout work, so you can spend your time on the event itself.

1. You choose an occasion

There are seven occasions: wedding, birthday, baby shower, graduation, party, corporate event and holiday gathering. Each one fills in sample wording, a motif, a layout and a style, so you start with something that already reads like an invitation. It only replaces fields you have not changed, so if you have already written your own title and then switch occasion, your title stays.

2. You choose a layout

There are six layouts. Formal is centered with a fine double border. Modern is left aligned with the day of the month shown big. Framed has a bold frame around the card. Photo puts a photo across the top, or down the left side on a wide card. Confetti is playful, with the date in a colored pill. Minimal is airy, with lots of white space. Each is arranged separately for tall, square and wide cards, so a landscape invitation is not just a stretched portrait one.

3. You choose a style and a color theme

Four styles change the whole mood: Classic on cream paper with serif type and fine gold-style lines, Modern on white with bold color blocks, Playful with confetti and rounded type, and Night on a deep navy card with stars. On top of the style you pick one of six color themes, each with a main color, an accent color and a symbol. You can rename and recolor them to match your event, for instance your wedding colors.

4. You fill in your event

Add a line above the title (like “Together with their families”), the title itself (the names or the name of the event), a line below it, the date, a start time and an optional end time, the venue and address, your RSVP instructions, a dress code and an extra note. Type {heart} or {gift} in the note and the maker draws an icon in the line. There are 16 motifs and icons, including rings, a balloon, a cake, a graduation cap, a champagne glass and a flower. If you add a monogram, such as the couple’s initials, it appears in a ring above the title on formal, framed and minimal layouts. Dates and times are written in your site’s language, so the weekday and month come out the way your guests expect.

5. You add your guests

Each guest has a name, a number of seats, a table, an optional personal line and a number of copies. The maker prints the name with a word before it if you like (“For”, “Dear”), then “Admit 2” and “Table 5” below it, and the personal line in italics. You choose which of these to print. This is the part that turns one design into a hundred invitations without any copying and pasting.

6. You add a QR code

The QR code can hold a calendar event, so a phone can offer to add the date, time and place, a link to your RSVP form or event website, or a map link to the venue. It goes on the back by default, which keeps the front clean, but you can put it on the front or both. Add a label such as “Scan to RSVP” or leave it blank for an automatic one. Most current phone cameras can read QR codes. What happens next depends on the phone, so scan a printed copy with yours before you print them all.

Check your invitations before you print them

Below the guest gallery, the guest list tools show how many invitations you have, how many will be printed counting copies, and how many seats you have counted, with charts of seats per invitation and seats by table. The checks list goes through everything before you spend paper on it. It tells you if the title, date, venue or RSVP is missing, if the date is already in the past, if the QR code has nothing to hold or is too dense to scan easily, if the Photo layout has no photo yet, and which lines had to be shortened or left off the card because they would not fit. It also looks at the guests, for names that appear twice, invitations with no name when names are printed, seats that are missing, and names that are too long for the card.

The random sample button shows six invitations from your list, a quick way to spot-check a long list without scrolling through all of it. The checks look at the layout and the list. Whether the date and the spelling of every name are right is up to you.

Import your guest list

The Guests tab lets you download a CSV template, fill it in with a spreadsheet program, and import it. Each row is one invitation, with columns for the guest, seats, table, a personal line and copies. You can replace the current guests or add to them, and export the list back to CSV at any time, which is handy for keeping a master copy. If your file has a column called “name” instead of “guest”, that works too.

A tip for spreadsheets: programs such as Excel can turn something like a table number into a date. Format the table column as text before you fill it in. To protect you, the maker also marks any cell that starts with =, +, – or @ when it exports, so a spreadsheet does not run it as a formula, and removes that mark again when you import.

Sizes, printing and sharing

Choose from six sizes: 5 × 7 in, 7 × 5 in landscape, 4 × 6 in, 5 × 5 in square, A5 and the tall DL size. Corners are square by default, which is what you want for straight cutting, and you can turn on rounded corners for a die-cut card.

• Print-ready PDF: one invitation per page at the exact card size, repeated by the number of copies, with an optional 0.125 inch bleed. The colors at the edge of the card are extended into the bleed, so there is no white edge after cutting. This is the file to send to a print shop. Check the shop’s own size and bleed rules before you order.
• Home printing sheets: invitations at actual size on Letter or A4, with cut guides. Invitations are large, so you get one 5 × 7 per page and two 4 × 6 on Letter. Backs can be printed mirrored so they line up when you print double-sided and flip on the long edge.
• Images: PNG or JPG at 150, 300 or 600 DPI with the resolution embedded, one invitation at a time or as a ZIP with each file named after the guest. If you are sending invitations by message or email, choose fronts only and 150 DPI, and share the images.

If every invitation would look the same, for example when you do not print guest names, only one front is exported, with the total number of copies in the PDF. Print one test page on plain paper before you use good card stock. Colors are shown in RGB, so printed colors can look a little different. We design and prepare invitations. We do not print, send or deliver them, and we do not collect replies.

Tips for a good invitation

• Put the essentials where eyes land. Who, when and where should be readable from a few feet away. Everything else can be smaller.
• Write the date in full. A weekday, a date and a year (“Saturday, June 12, 2027”) avoids mix-ups that “6/12” can cause between countries.
• Give a reply date. “Kindly reply by May 1” gets you more answers than “RSVP”.
• Say what to wear. One short line, such as “Garden formal”, saves a lot of messages.
• Put the details guests keep on the back. Parking, registry and directions do not need to compete with the title on the front.
• Keep the type readable. Light text on a pale color disappears on paper. The Night style and a strong theme color keep contrast high.
• Mind your timing. Send wedding invitations about two months ahead and most other events two to four weeks ahead.
• Test before you print. Check every date and name, and scan the QR code from a printed copy.

A note on privacy

A guest list is personal information. If you only design and download, your list stays in your browser. If you save a batch, the guest names are stored on our server, so do not save a list you want to keep private. Keep the CSV file instead. Only put people’s names on invitations if they are yours to share.

About this invitation card maker

What we store, and for how long

Invitations contain event details and guest names, so here is exactly what happens to them.

• If you only design and download: your invitations stay in your browser and are not saved on our server.
• If you save a batch: the event details, settings, guest list and image address are stored under a random public link. You are asked to confirm first. Guest batches are removed automatically after [180] days without changes. Batches owned by logged-in users are kept.
• Your photo: a photo from your device is not stored on the server unless you are signed in and it is saved to the Media Library. Otherwise it works on your screen and in your downloads, but is left out of a saved batch.
• In your browser: the key that lets you edit a saved batch is kept in your browser’s local storage on your device.

Anyone with a public link can view and print a batch. Shared batch pages are set not to appear in search results, but a stranger with the link can still read the guest list.

Honest limits

A batch can have up to [300] guests. Layouts are fixed, so there is no free-form layout editor, and each batch has one style, one layout and one size. Fonts are the standard fonts on your device, so there are no script or calligraphy fonts. The words “Admit”, “Table” and “Scan to…” on the card are in English, though dates and times follow your site’s language. On landscape and square cards there is often no room for a QR code on the front, so it is left off and the checks tell you. We do not send invitations, collect RSVPs or order prints. We would rather you know that now than find out a week before the party.