Our invitation business was built on giving our customers the freedom to make their own design choices.  That doesn’t mean they all make “good” choices!  This quick guide should help pave the way for those of you who are a bit confused about the purpose of combining one font with another on your wedding stationery:

• The Block Font: Block fonts are typically used for the body of your invitation and reply, extensive information on accessory cards, road names on maps, and any other details that need to be legible at small point sizes.  Unless you are the ultra mod type, you’ll need a script font to soften up your invitation a bit. Block fonts come in “All Caps”, “Small Caps”, and “Full Casing” (upper and lower case) varietals.  If you have lengthy driving directions, we do not recommend All or Small caps fonts as they tend to be harder to read in mass (especially while driving!).
  • You may also hear some design types refer to “serif” and “sans serif”.  Serif fonts have little structural details at the end of each character’s stroke.  Sans (meaning “without”) Serif fonts have clean, straight finishes on each stroke of a letter.  Sans Serif fonts are typically considered more modern, while serif fonts are considered easier to read.

• The Script Font: Some may say that the script font is what really gives your invitation its personality, though I’ll say that it is the combination of the script and block font that are more revealing.  Script fonts are the class of “scrolly,” decorative type that we often use for the names of the Bride and Groom, and accent/header text on the reply and accessory cards.  We also love supplementing the word “and” with a decorative, scripty ampersand “&” to create that logo effect on a tag or reply postcard.We don’t recommend using script fonts for the body of your invitation, unless you’ve chosen a less fussy font AND you don’t have a lot to say (i.e. exnay on the poemsay).
  • Script fonts are often hard to read at point sizes of 18 and smaller, which is one of the main reasons that we combine the block and script fonts… so that the body of the invitation remains legible, while maintaining focus on the real stars of the invitation – the bride and groom, of course!

As designers, one of our pet peeves is pairing script fonts together.  It nearly makes us cringe every time a bride asks our design team to do it.  We often double check and give them alternate views of script-block pairings we would suggest.  Script fonts compete for attention as they don’t provide enough contrast to each other.  It’s aesthetically confusing!  Every once in a while someone insists on putting the 2 script fonts together.  Maybe they can’t make up their mind as to which one they like best so they decide to use both?  We’ll accommodate this somewhat odd request because keeping our customers happy is a priority, but please, pretty please, take our advice and steer clear of combining script fonts!  Your wedding invitations will be better for it!