How to commission an artist for your wedding invitation

When it is worth commissioning

A template works well when your requirements are ordinary and your timeline is short. Commissioning earns its keep when something about the wedding is specific: a venue worth drawing, a family motif, two cultures to hold in one design, a language pairing a template cannot set properly.

It is also the right choice when you need a set. An invitation, an envelope, a menu, a seating card and a thank-you note designed together look like one wedding. Assembled from five templates they look like five.

Start earlier than feels necessary

Work backwards from the date. Guests want the invitation several weeks ahead, printing takes days, approving proofs takes longer than anyone expects because more than one person has opinions, and the designer needs time to draw.

Six to eight weeks before you want them in hand is comfortable. Less is possible, but every compression comes out of the revision stage, which is the part that makes the design yours.

• Decide the wording first — it changes the layout
• Confirm names and spellings with the families early
• Leave time for a printed proof, not just a screen

How to write a brief a designer can use

The best briefs describe the wedding, not the artwork. Say where it is, what time of day, how many people, how formal, what the two families are like, what you want a guest to feel opening the envelope. A designer will translate that better than you can.

Then give constraints, which are genuinely useful: the languages that must appear, any religious elements that must or must not be included, whether there are several events, whether you need a matching set. Show a few things you like and, more usefully, a few you do not.

• What the wedding is actually like
• Languages and scripts required
• Number of events and pieces
• Two or three references, with what you like about each

What happens after you send the brief

The designer accepts or declines. Declining is normal and costs you nothing — a designer with no capacity in your window is doing you a favour by saying so early rather than delivering late.

Once accepted you pay the agreed price, which is fixed before any work starts, and the designer begins. You talk in one place, files are delivered there, and you either approve the work or ask for a change within the revisions your package includes.

Printing it well

Invitations reward good paper more than almost anything else printed, because they are held. Ask your designer for a print-ready file with bleed, and think about the finish early: a heavier stock, a textured surface or a foil detail changes how the card feels in a way no design decision can substitute for.

Order more than your guest list. Somebody is always forgotten, an address is always wrong, and a reprint of twenty is disproportionately expensive compared with including them in the first run.

How to start

Everything runs through one place. Artists sign in at the artist studio, upload work, choose which products each piece suits, and see what they have earned. Customers browse the artwork, pick a design, and choose what to put it on.

Nothing about it is exclusive. You can sell the same work elsewhere at the same time, and there is no listing fee and no minimum.

• Apply with three pieces so we can see how you work
• Choose which products each design belongs on
• Get paid by bank transfer on what sells

Common questions