10 Artistic Wedding Invitation Ideas

If you’re going to be part of a wedding soon — yourself or someone else’s — then you’ll enjoy these ten artistic wedding invitation ideas! Elegant and refined, they’ll flex your creative muscle. No one will guess that they were budget-friendly or DIY!

1. Announce with a Watercolor Wedding Map Save the Date

A watercolor wedding map announces an upcoming wedding with artistry and grace! If you like the idea of sending out a save the date map and would like to know how to create one yourself, check out this tutorial! You’ll make your map, then use Photoshop to digitize it. Finally, choose a high-quality printing company to make copies of your map. I used printingforless.com for the map shown below, and I was impressed with the results! If you’re not up to making your own map, you can always hire someone to work with you. I love eDanae’s wedding maps on Etsy!

How to Create an Illustrated Watercolor Map | The Postman's Knock — You can learn how to make a map like this one in the How to Create an Illustrated Watercolor Map tutorial.

2. Use the Season as a Wedding Invitation Theme

If you enjoy illustrating with watercolors, take inspiration from the season that your wedding will occur in! Paint a border that incorporates vegetation and colors that represent your wedding season, then write your name and your spouse’s name using paintbrush lettering. You can use a computer font to write details. Dafont.com and fontsquirrel.com are both great resources for finding unique (free) computer fonts!

10 Artistic Wedding Invitation Ideas | The Postman's Knock — Don’t be intimidated by the idea of digitizing your artwork to make invitations! I can walk you through it in the Digitizing Artwork & Calligraphy eCourse.

3. Handwrite Invitations for Intimate Events

If you only plan on inviting a handful of guests to your wedding, try handwriting the invitations. Guests will be astonished at the time and care that went into each invitation, and you’ll be proud of your accomplishment!

Handwritten Wedding Invitations | The Postman's Knock — These Kaitlin Style handwritten wedding invitations were made for a Hollywood wedding (the names in the sample are fake). Part of the appeal for the client was the privacy aspect; they didn’t want anyone at a printing company to leak out event details to the press.

4. Draw Inspiration from your Wedding’s Setting

If you’re excited about the setting of your wedding, celebrate it in your wedding invitation design! The bottom of an invitation provides the perfect space for a pen and ink illustration.

5. Mix Materials

Wedding invitation suites don’t have to rely on consistent materials for each piece. Instead, you can mix and match for visual and tactile impact!

Here’s a photo of the final presentation for further inspiration!

6. Acknowledge Cultures

If you’re part of a multicultural couple, then you know the beauty — and sometimes the struggle! — that comes with combining two languages and traditions. You can celebrate that with your wedding invitation design by including more than one language and incorporating imagery that acknowledges both cultures.

8 Tips for Starting a Calligraphy Business | The Postman's Knock — This invitation design was created for a Dutch groom and a Brazilian bride. The tulips were inspired by Holland, and the vivid colors serve as an homage to passionate, lively Brazil. You can learn how to make invitations just like these in this tutorial.

7. Splurge on the Printing Technique

If luxe is what you’re going for, then I would recommend foil stamped or letterpress invitations! You make the design, use Adobe Illustrator to convert it into a vector file, then send the file to a company that specializes in letterpress printing. They’ll make and use a custom metal stamp to impress your design into luxurious cotton paper! Letterpress and foil stamping aren’t cheap, but — if this type of invitation will give you joy — the results are worth the cost.

Gold Foil Flourish Formal Invitation Suite | The Postman's Knock — I always use Boxcar Press to bring my foil stamp and letterpress designs to life. The invitations shown above were foil stamped with gold.

8. Embrace the Power of Glue

I like to use a little trick to make invitations more stately and substantial: order them a little bit small, then glue them onto a cardstock backing. You can easily cut cardstock or invitations to any size using a guillotine paper cutter. Then, use a glue stick to glue the invitations to the cardstock! (It’s important to use a glue stick as opposed to liquid glue because a glue stick doesn’t make paper “bubble” up after it dries.)

Thermography Invitation Suite | The Postman's Knock — The invitation, detail card, and sash buckle shown here were all professionally printed. Once I received them, I glued them onto orange card stock backings that I cut myself. The sash buckle was then glued on to a sash — also the result of a DIY cutting job.

9. Enhance Your Wedding Envelopes With a Stamp Collage

The first part of your wedding invitation that recipients will see is the envelope. Try livening it up with a stamp collage, which adds personality and visual interest! (I’ve had clients who used the postage stamps that their parents used on their own wedding invitation envelopes, which I thought was really cool.)

White Ink Calligraphed Envelope | The Postman's Knock — You can learn about how to make a stamp collage (including where to find stamps) in the How to Make a Stunning Postage Stamp Collage tutorial.

10. Add a Wax Seal to Wedding Envelopes

A wax seal is the pinnacle of elegance! It adds texture and a bit of nostalgia for the days of old to your wedding invitation suite. Luckily for us, it’s easier than ever to add a wax seal with a low-temperature glue gun and anti-crack sealing wax sticks!

Wax Seal | The Postman's Knock — Note that while wax seals look gorgeous, they do require a bit of extra postage ($0.21 in the USA) to cover a “non-machinable fee”.

Whether you have a wedding coming up or not, I hope that you gleaned inspiration from these artistic wedding invitation ideas! If you have any questions about any of the techniques used to make them, please feel free to ask in the comments. I’m always glad to answer!

Thanks so much for reading TPK, and have a fantastic week!

Warmly,