Your invitations do not need to match the event theme, but doing so shows that you’re throwing a well-put-together occasion that suggests that every decision is intentional. Having a cohesive theme adds a nice detail that guests will surely appreciate.

Ideally, you want to send out invitations 2-3 months before most events, such as birthdays. However, this isn’t always possible. If you can’t give that much notice, send them out as soon as all of the plans are confirmed. This will allow your guests as much time as possible to receive the invite and plan to accept the invitation.

However, the bigger and more important your event is, the more advanced notice you’ll want to give your guests. For example, wedding invitations can be sent even six months in advance.

You’ll want to consider using high-definition printing, or HD printing, for important or larger images.

With our HD printing, we use CMYK ink to better generate a larger variety of images for better color accuracy, particularly when used for light pastel colors and skin tones. High-definition printing helps photos look livelier. This is because the colors will seem brighter and more realistic as lines will be crisper and details will be more clear, which is particularly important for larger images. Large images without HD printing may seem pixelated and low-quality.

For our invitations, you can print on both the front and back whether it’s for a design by one of our creators that already exists or a completely new design you create or customize.

You can edit the design on the back through our Design Tool and selecting "Layers." By customizing the back of your Stepping Into 50 Birthday Party Invitation, you can have a more complete invitation and present more information to your potential guests, but don’t worry - you don’t have to add a design to the back if you prefer to just have a design in the front.

When in doubt, you can’t go wrong with our 18 pt Matte paper. It has a standard uncoated matte finish and a natural feel to it to empower any design and color printed on this paper to pop making it the perfect paper type for invitations.

We currently carry a number of paper options our customers can choose from. To look at our current options, scroll up on this page (or go near the top of any invitation product page), look on the right-hand side, and click on "Compare Papers".

You’ll see a pop-up that will list the different paper types we have along with information for each such as an image, description, thickness, and weight to help you decide on one. While these are all great options, the Signature Matte is our most popular paper option.