Design your own wedding invitations

To get started, think all the way back to when you and your beloved first met, and all the memories you've had since. What memories and associations come to mind, and what images would be fun to incorporate into your invitation and save the date card? If a collage approach suits your style, use your scanner to incorporate all sorts of found objects and mementos into your creation: informal photos, ticket stubs, programs and menus, maps, wine labels, coins, or anything else that brings up great memories.

Or you may want to follow a simper, more spiritual approach that incorporates images, colors, and quotations that are especially meaningful to you both. Here are some tips:

• Be thinking about creative formats and textures for your creations, as well. For example, create fun, personalized save the date magnets by printing your design onto 8 1/2 x 11 printable magnetic sheets.
• If you're creating a wedding Web site, a save the date card is a great way to let people know the URL -- and you may want to add it to your invitation as well. Be sure to use some of the design elements we're discussing here on your Web site, as well.
• With the rise of scrapbooking, there are more papers and creative embellishments available than ever, so one great way to get inspired is to head to a scrapbooking store and check out all the amazing supplies that you can incorporate into your invitations.

The good news is that it's easy to create and print an expressive, personal invitation, whether you want to use Microsoft Word or create a more complex design with a graphics program like Microsoft Publisher or Adobe Illustrator, or Adobe Photoshop. If you enjoy, digital scrapbooking, whatever program you use to create layered scrapbook layouts will work beautifully for your invitation.

This invitation graphic was created with Adobe Illustrator, but you could easily achieve a similar effect with Microsoft Word.

Here's an example of a more traditional invitation created in Microsoft Word. The graphics came from Microsoft.com's free clip art collection, which you can access from within Microsoft Word.

To create a similar invitation in Microsoft Word, follow these steps:

1. Open a blank Word document.
2. Click Insert > Picture > Clip Art.
3. In the search box that appears at the right of your screen, enter terms like "wedding," "rose," bells," and "border" to see what's available. (You can find the blue graphics from the example above by searching under "border.")
4. When you click on the clip art you want to use, it will appear in your Word document at your cursor location. You can then use Word's drawing and formatting tools to move the images around, resize them, make the graphic appear behind the text, or increase the brightness of the image -- this makes it light enough for text to be visible through the graphic.

Tip: The Microsoft site offers a number of free wedding-themed templates in both Microsoft Word and Microsoft Publisher -- you can find a wide range of wedding-themed projects by clicking  Templates > Holidays and Occasions > Occasions and Events > Wedding from the Microsoft.com home page or by going directly to the Wedding templates page.