How to print wedding invitations at home, sheet by sheet

Guides to printing at home tend to stop at "use good paper and do a test print". The test print matters, but so do the numbers around it: how many cards, how many sheets, what to set in the print dialog, and how to cut. This guide runs one couple's invitations through from the count to the post office, in the order you will do it.

The example: 66 addresses, a flat 5 by 7 inch card printed on both sides, sent in an envelope. Invitations go out eight to ten weeks before the wedding, so start printing a week or two before that. Our guide to when to send wedding invitations works out the exact day.

Step 1: Count addresses, not guests

One invitation goes to each couple or family, so the count is your addresses, not your guests. For 117 guests that is often around 66 addresses. Our guide to what wedding invitations cost explains the difference and what it saves.

Then add about ten percent for misprints, a bad cut and two keepsakes: 66 + 8 = 74 cards.

Free toolWedding guest list templatePaste your names and download a guest list for Excel or Google Sheets, already filled in.Make my guest list

Step 2: Check what your printer can feed

This is the step that decides whether home printing works at all. Look up your printer's manual or specification page for three things:

1. The thickest paper it takes, and from which tray. Card usually has to go through a rear or manual feed, one sheet at a time. Epson's page for the EcoTank Photo ET-8550, for example, lists a rear manual feed for paper up to 1.3 mm thick. Your model's number is the one that counts.
2. Whether it prints on both sides by itself. The same Epson prints both sides automatically on A4 only. On card, expect to print the fronts, turn the sheets over, and feed them again.
3. Whether it prints to the edge. If your design has colour or art running off the edge of the card, you need either borderless printing or a sheet bigger than the card that you then trim. Trimming is the safer of the two.

If the manual does not list card at all, your printer may still take it, but buy one pack, not ten, until you have tested it.

Step 3: Buy the paper, and work out the cost

Cardstock is sold by weight, and the labels are confusing: "110 lb index" and "110 lb cover" are different thicknesses, because each grade is weighed on a different sheet size. 110 lb index is about 199 grams per square metre, and 110 lb cover about 298, half as heavy again. Compare thickness or grams per square metre where a pack lists them, and always against what your printer accepts.

The worked example uses Neenah Exact Index 110 lb cardstock, letter size, at $24.19 for 250 sheets at Quill on 1 November 2026. That is $0.097 a sheet.

Two cards fit on a letter sheet because each card, with its trim margin, is about 5¼ by 7¼ inches: side by side that is 10½ by 7¼, which fits inside 11 by 8½. You need a layout program that places two pages on one sheet without shrinking them; the "two pages per sheet" option in most print dialogs shrinks them, so do not use it. If you are not sure, print one per sheet. It costs about $3.60 more and is simpler to cut.

Ink is the cost you cannot know in advance. A full-colour design with a dark background uses far more than black writing on white. Print your ten test sheets and see how far the cartridges or tanks drop.

Step 4: Get the file right

A file for printing is the card at full size plus a margin, called the bleed, that is trimmed off. For a 5 by 7 inch card, that is about an eighth of an inch on each edge.

• Keep writing a quarter inch inside the trimmed edge. A cut that wanders by a sixteenth of an inch then takes nothing that matters.
• Run background colour and art into the bleed, so a slightly wide cut does not leave a white line.
• Check the resolution. 300 dots per inch at the printed size is the usual standard for print. A file made for a screen will look soft on paper.
• Proofread it now, together. Our guide to wedding invitation wording has a proofreading order for two people. A spelling mistake found after 74 cards costs another pack.

Step 5: Print one test sheet, on plain paper first

1. Open the print dialog and set the scale to 100 percent or actual size. "Fit to page" shrinks the card, and then nothing lines up.
2. Set the paper type to the printer's card or heavyweight setting and the quality to its highest.
3. Print the front on plain paper. Measure it with a ruler: the trimmed card should be 5 by 7 inches.
4. Mark the top edge of that sheet with a pencil arrow, put it back in the feed the way your printer turns pages, and print the back. Hold it up to a window. If the back is upside down or shifted, change the orientation and try again.
5. Only now print one sheet on the cardstock, both sides. Leave it to dry and rub a thumb across the darkest area. If it smudges, give the rest more drying time before you stack them.

Write down exactly how you fed the sheet. You will repeat it 73 more times.

Step 6: Print in batches

Print all the fronts first, in batches of ten, and spread them out to dry. Then turn them as your notes say and print the backs. Batches mean a jam or a streak costs you ten sheets of your spares, not the whole run. Check every tenth sheet for streaks, which mean the printer needs a cleaning cycle.

Step 7: Trim

A rotary or guillotine paper trimmer gives straight, matching cuts; a metal ruler and a craft knife on a cutting mat also work, more slowly. Either way:

1. Measure where the printed bleed starts on your test card.
2. Set the trimmer's guide so the cut falls one eighth of an inch inside it.
3. Cut the same edge on every card before you move the guide, so all 74 come out the same size.

This is a good job to share: one of you cuts the long edges, the other the short ones.

Step 8: Weigh one, then post them

Put one finished invitation in its envelope, with anything that goes inside it, and take it to the post office before you buy stamps. From 4 October 2026 a letter up to 1 ounce costs $0.82 with USPS, and $1.11 up to 2 ounces. A square envelope adds a $0.49 nonmachinable surcharge, because its length is less than 1.3 times its height. A 5 by 7 card in a rectangular envelope usually goes at the letter price; weighing it tells you for sure.

When to have them printed instead

Home printing suits flat cards, a count under a hundred or so, and a printer that takes your card. Have them printed if:

• your printer cannot feed the card you want, or the test sheet smudges or curls,
• the design needs foil, letterpress or white ink, which a home printer cannot do,
• you are short on time: printing and trimming 74 two-sided cards is an evening or two of work for two people.

Printing from Yes, I Do

In Yes, I Do, the invitation designs are 5 by 7 inch cards with the trim margin already in the file, and while you move a line the editor shows the safe area, a quarter inch inside the trimmed edge, so writing stays out of reach of the cut. Save the card as a PDF, front and back as two pages at the card's own size, or each side as a PNG, both at 300 dots per inch. Then print at actual size, as in step 5.

Your guest list is in the same place, so the number of addresses in step 1 and the names for the envelopes are already there, and both of you can work from it.

Questions

Sources

• Epson Australia: EcoTank Photo ET-8550 specifications, for the rear manual feed for paper up to 1.3 mm thick and automatic two-sided printing on A4 only.
• Quill: Neenah Exact Index 110 lb cardstock, 8.5 by 11, 250 sheets, for the $24.19 price per pack, read 1 November 2026.
• 4over4: 300 gsm to lb paper, grade by grade, for the conversion factors of 2.708 for cover and 1.813 for index, which give the 298 and 199 grams per square metre for 110 lb.
• USPS Notice 123, price list, for the $0.82 and $1.11 letter prices and the $0.49 nonmachinable surcharge, effective 4 October 2026.
• USPS Domestic Mail Manual 101, physical standards, for the aspect ratio under 1.3 that makes a square letter nonmachinable.