Places to Find or Buy Printable Wedding Announcements

With the summer wedding season quickly approaching, many of you may be thinking about what to do about wedding announcements. If you are considering printing your own wedding announcements but don't know where you can find or buy them, the following is a list of places you can obtain printable wedding announcements at little or no cost to you. Each store or web site offers an optional photo feature that allows you to customize your printable wedding announcements with a photo or several photos from your wedding.

www.hp.com. Hewlett Packard's Online Print Studio allows you to create a photo wedding announcement online and print it for free. Go to www.hp.com, click on "Explore & Create" at the top of the page, and then click on "Print Studio" under "Create Home Printing Projects" on the left-hand side of the page. On the Print Studio page, click on "Find a Project for Home." A new window will open. Click on "Invitations & Announcements." You can use the Filter option to narrow the projects to just Announcements. The second project shown, which pictures a couple on a blue and yellow background, can be used to create a printable wedding announcement. When you click on this photo, a smaller window will open and give you a link to the template and to the type of paper needed to create the printable wedding announcement. Hewlett-Packard recommends two-sided, 8.5''x 11'', heavyweight paper like the company's own Brochure & Flier Paper, which can be purchased at any retail or office supply store. Once you select the template for this printable wedding announcement, Hewlett-Packard loads the template and then allows you to customize the design.

Wedding photos can either be imported from your computer or from the photo-sharing service Snapfish. Just click on either the "My Computer" or "Snapfish" icon on the left-hand side of the screen and then select the photo you want to use. Hold down the control button to select multiple photos. After the photo or photos have been imported, all you have to do is drag and drop one of the photos onto the front of the card on the right-hand side of the screen. Hewlett-Packard automatically resizes the photo to fit the allocated space. However, you can also choose to flip, rotate, or change the scale of the photo. To customize the wedding announcement, which will go inside the card, click on "Personalize Message" on the top left-hand side of the screen. Then choose the type, size, and color of the font that you want and write your announcement in the box provided. If you select the inside view of the card, you will be able to see how the announcement looks as you type it. When you're done, click on "Preview & Print," and Hewlett-Packard will guide you through the printing process.

Two other options for printable wedding announcements can be found in Hewlett-Packard's Activity Center. From the Hewlett-Packard main page, select "Explore & Create" at the top of the page, and then click on "Activity Center" under "Create Home Printing Projects" on the left-hand side of the screen. To explore the first option, choose "Cards" on the left-hand side of the Activity Center main page, then "event-based good news announcements" under "Featured Projects," and then "Get started." You will then be able to upload the photo you want, choose the style of card you want (a ¼ fold photo card or 4x8 photo card), and edit your photo before moving onto the card. Once the photo is to your liking, hit "Continue." You will then be able to choose from seven frames, seven overlays, and nineteen border colors for your printable wedding announcement. You will also be able to write your own wedding announcement and choose between ten font styles and thirteen font colors. When you're done, you can preview, download, and print the printable wedding announcements. Hewlett-Packard has a project instruction guide that can be viewed online or printed to guide you through the printing process. To explore the second option, choose "Personalized wedding kit" from the bottom of the Activity Center main page, then "Bella Flora wedding invitation kit," then "Get started," and finally "Continue." On the Bella Flora page, you will be able to choose between four designs for the printable wedding announcement, upload and use three different wedding photos, and customize your text. Once the announcement is to your liking, Hewlett-Packard gives you the option of printing a draft version from its web site or downloading and printing a final version of the printable wedding announcement. As with its cards, Hewlett-Packard also offers printing instructions to ensure proper printing of your announcement.

Your Local Kodak Picture Kiosk. According to Kodak's web site, www.kodak.com, you can use its picture kiosks to add borders and texts to your own pictures. Thus, you can use them to create your own printable wedding announcements. The kiosks offer a variety of themes and styles of borders and texts to choose from when customizing your printable wedding announcements. To find your local Kodak Picture Kiosk, go to www.kodak.com, click on "Kodak Picture Kiosk" on the left-hand side of the screen, select "Kiosk Store Locator," and enter your zip code in the space provided. Once you have located a store, you can either take your digital media card, CD, or disk to the store and upload the images to the kiosk; transfer the pictures from your bluetooth-enabled cell phone to the kiosk while standing in front of it; or directly scan the picture into the kiosk. Then follow the onscreen directions to customize and print your printable wedding announcements.

www.kodak.com. Kodak's web site also offers a free download of its Kodak Easyshare software. The software allows you to create your own photo cards and announcements, including printable wedding announcements. You can preview the software's available templates before downloading the software by clicking on "Consumer Products, Software" on the main page, then "Easyshare Software," then "Photo Greeting Cards," and finally "Preview Card Templates." If you like the templates, simply download and install the software; select the "Creative Projects" tab in Windows or the "Print at Home" tab in Mac; and follow the directions for importing and customizing your photos and announcements.

www.americangreetings.com. American Greetings' web site offers two printable photo wedding announcement designs. Just click on "Create & Print" at the top of the main page, then "Add-a-Photo" under "Projects," then "Announcements," and finally "Only Just Begun" or "Newlyweds." In order to print the two announcements, you must first purchase a Create & Print Membership. The web site offers a free one-month trial membership. After that, membership costs $19.99 per year. After you have joined, log into the site, select your project, click "Personalize & Print," and wait for your project to be downloaded into the Create & Print workspace, which will open in a pop-up window. To add your wedding photo to the printable wedding announcement, double click on the words "Add-a-Photo" that are printed inside the project. After the Add-a-Photo window opens, select the picture you want on your hard drive and then click "Open." American Greetings will then insert the photo in the appropriate space. You can then move, resize, or change the layering of the photo in the project.

Your Local Fed Ex Kinko's Store orwww.fedex.com. Your can create printable wedding announcements either online or at your local Fed Ex Kinko's store. You must take the photo or the media that the photo is stored on with you to the store, or you can upload your photo to www.fedex.com, create the announcement, and have the wedding announcement sent to the store for printing. A set of 25 printable wedding announcements costs $29.99 and comes with 26 envelopes.

www.smilebox.com. Smilebox's web site allows you to create printable photo wedding announcements from over 100 designs. You can email or post the announcement to your blog for free. However, to print the announcements, you must first download the company's software and then either purchase a subscription to Club Smilebox for $4.99/month or $39.99/year (a two-week free trial is included) or one of Smilebox's premium designs. An example premium design shown on Smilebox's "Learn More" page was $2.99. Once you buy a premium design, it is yours to keep so you can print from it and reuse it as often as you would like. The first time you use the Smilebox software, it will automatically load the most recently loaded photos from the My Pictures folder on your computer to the software's Photo Well. To add other photos, click the "Get Photos" button on the bottom of the Photo Well page and then select the photo or photos on your hard drive that you want to add. To add multiple photos, hold down the control button while selecting the items. Click "Add" and then "Done" when you are through. Photo Well's autopopulate function automatically adds the photos to your printable wedding announcement in the order that they appear in Photo Well when you click on "Personalize" in the design. If you wish to add the photos individually, Smilebox advises that you use the "Edit" function instead.