The right fonts and typography are important in setting the tone and mood for your big day. It plays a much more important role than you think. When should you start looking into this? Anytime after you decide your wedding theme. Then you can start choosing fonts that will make the whole theme come alive.

This post is for those of you who are designing your own wedding invitations. If you have a designer doing it for you, then trust them to do the job. Just make sure you use the same set of fonts for all your stationery and signs on your wedding day.

There are a lot of free fonts out there, but quantity does not equal quality. There is a reason why some fonts are famous – they have a pre-set system that will make your typography spacing automatically look good. While some other fonts are also nice, there is a need to manually adjust the spacing. That’s fine for minor display text.

If you think that you do not have an eye for design, what you can do is put together a Pinterest folder of invitations and typography styles that you like. You can also refer to good quality magazines and websites. Here, we teach you how to identify fonts.

#01 Choosing the right font

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Start by choosing the main fonts, whether it is for the main title, or the bride and groom’s names or initials. Here are their basic groups:

SERIF
Serif typefaces are fonts with a small line trailing from the edges of letters and symbols. There are serif typefaces for almost every era.

Theme: Traditional, classic, formal, elegant, old school
Eg. Georgia, Rockwell, Baskerville, Garamond

SANS SERIF
A typeface without serif is called a sans serif typeface. It normally gives out a feel of ‘less is more’ minimalism.

Theme: Contemporary, chic, modern
Eg. Helvetica, Myriad, Interstate, Univers

SCRIPT
Often fluid strokes created by both calligraphy and handwritten fonts. These fonts have a tendency to dominate a design so please use sparingly.

Theme: Romantic, elegant, personal
Eg: Alex Brush, Zaphino, Great Vibes, Scriptina

DECORATIVE
Decorative fonts are very distinctive, and because there are so many such fonts out there, it can actually make your stationery and masthead uniquely yours.

It’s great if you can find one right font to convey your theme; however, that only comes with a lot of patient scanning through font websites. Our advice? Go through only font sites that have decent, good fonts so that you won’t waste too much time.

Theme: Any theme you can think of.

#02 Matching the reading text fonts

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After you’ve chosen your main title fonts, pair them with a reading font using either one of these methods:

1. Use fonts from the opposite group. So if you are using serif or script fonts as your title, select a sans serif font as the reading text.

2. Stick with the same font. No point choosing another if it’s not very different from the first one.

3. Use fonts from the same group. If you are using the bold version of a font for the title, for example, try using italics for the reading text. This normally works better with sans serif fonts.

#03 Avoid using too many fonts

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More fonts mean a higher chance of mismatch and disaster, so try to keep it at just two or three. There’s currently a carnival trend of using lots of fonts, but we suggest you avoid that unless you’ve really mastered typography. One wrong choice of font can totally ruin your design.

#04 Print process

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Consult your printer to find out whether the fonts you have chosen are suitable for the kind of special effect and paper you are printing on. For example, fonts are not allowed to be too thin for die-cut or embossed paper. Finally, always print out your design to see if you are happy with the sizes of the fonts.

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