Planning a wedding - one with the sorts of bells and whistles that mean you’d like nicely designed wedding invites, menus and other paper goods - can get pricey. You might be totting up your potential costs, and be wondering where you can make some cuts to your spending without having a diminished experience.

The advent of AI in design and easy, free access to software and apps like Canva have allowed couples who might have had limited style choices before now to create their own stationery; Something which reflects their vibe much better than the mainstream ivory and cream templates that have come before.

So if you can pop onto Canva, whip up a design and cut a stationery designer out of the equation, why would you consider paying for someone to do the job for you?

Well, I’ve got eight very good reasons why having a professional graphic designer on your wedmin team might be wise.

1. Design experience

As with anything in your wedding plans, hiring someone who does something every day, having practiced for years, will give you a better end product than you can create yourself if you’re new to this. Whether it’s baking a cake, making clothes, treating and arranging flowers - It’ll be higher quality, more time efficient and potentially cheaper than you chancing it yourself.

I trotted off to art school at the tender age of 19 and spent three years there being a teacher’s pet and trying to inhale all the knowledge I could about typographic form, branding, colour theory, print methods and art history. I graduated in 2010 and have spent the last fourteen years working across web and app design, branding, user experience and print. I’ve worked for companies in-house and also alongside businesses as a self-employed designer, which has given me a broad spectrum of experience.

I’m not just saying this because I’m arrogant (and certainly not to shout about how old I am!). All I’m saying is, if we estimate that I’ve worked 250 days per year for the last 14 years (give or take some days for holidays, maternity leave and the odd episode of being poorly) then I’ve spent roughly 3500 days practicing my craft.

I’ve encountered problems and overcome them, given advice, hands-on help, strategy support and hand-holding to many different people and all of this allows me to deliver a pretty good bespoke service. I know how to cater to specific needs, and I believe there’s value in that. It might not be valuable to you, and that’s cool, but some people would rather get someone who knows what they’re doing in, and some people would rather have a stab themselves. It’s up to you!

Oh, and one last note. I don’t use Canva! I use professional design software called Adobe InDesign, which is a lot more powerful, stable and allows for more creativity, alongside Illustrator and Photoshop which are also in the Adobe suite.

2. Limitations with AI and Canva

As intelligent as developments in new technology might be, there are some gaps in capability with these tools which may make getting exactly what you want harder than working with real people. If you find it hard to articulate your ideas, these technologies and tools will struggle to compute and interpret your meaning. Alternatively, working with a human who can have a real conversation with you and come back with sketches and ideas, will make it easier for you to get to the final design that you love.

Artificial Intelligence needs training - It won’t get things right the first time. Using tools such as ChatGPT can help you write the text needed for your invites and website, but to get the tone you want, you’d have to keep asking for amendments until it’s correct - and not actually with any guarantee that you’ll get what you need.

Essentially, replacing a real professional designer with Canva isn’t a like-for-like trade in terms of what you can get out of it and might be more work than you’re willing or able to invest.

3. Intellectual property and specific designs

Another thing to consider when scrolling through Pinterest or Instagram and thinking “I could do this myself”, is that you can’t, and shouldn’t, copy something you’ve found on there. A professional designer has either created assets themselves, or has purchased licenses for fonts and imagery. In turn, the final design they create also belongs to them, including the ideas, sketches and iterations they’ve gone through to get to that point.

Simply copying a style you’ve seen and like is not only rude and disrespectful, but might land you in trouble. It’s best not to spend the lead up to your wedding day fighting about intellectual property and plagiarism, and just pay a fair price to a person who has put in the hard work to create a desirable design in the first place.

Equally important - cheap and counterfeit font files can corrupt, and this could mean you end up losing your work. Professional designers are insured, have back up files saved on hard drives and in the Cloud, and know how to format files so they don’t encounter these issues. Downloading free fonts can open you up to viruses and computer issues and is just not worth the risk.

Artificial Intelligence tools will be scraping images across the internet to build data, and use it to help people with designs in the future. I should hope, and believe it might be true, that designers will rally against having their work used in these data collections so that they can’t be copied and their ideas and skills be stolen used to make companies money. It could be argued therefore, that just because a tool is available to us, should we always use it? Especially if big companies are profiting from the graft of small business owners.

4. Printing your designs

When it comes to printing your stationery, there are a few things to think about. The first is where to get it done. Pro designers will have links with various print houses and finishers, and will have experimented, bought swatch books of papers and even visited behind the scenes to see the processes and how it all works. They’ll have relationships with suppliers who can offer different things and will know who to go to for each.

Additionally, do you know the difference between RGB and CMYK, and which you need to format to for your prints? What about file types, outlining fonts, packaging files, crop marks or bleed? If all of this going over your head, then you might end up with a decent design in Canva that sadly looks awful on paper. Employing a professional can mean they can deal with all of that, and you can be safe in the knowledge that your stationery is going look perfect.

5. Digital assets

It’s not just the paper goods that many couples want. From website designs, gift lists, digital invites and personalised photobooth frames - there are so many different things your wedding branding can work across, both print and digital. Sure you can do it yourself, but do you know all the sizes in pixels and the correct resolutions you need for each of these different things? Exporting things at the wrong size and resolution can mean your design are stretched, pixellated or displaying in the wrong colours.

6. Crafting and quality finishes

A few years ago I decided to stop displaying at wedding fairs because more often than not, people would stand in front of my work and say things like, '“Ooh, tassels! I could make my own placecards and add some tassels” - and I realised I was more like a breathing Pinterest board than a service to these types of DIY couples.

But hey - do you know where to get the best tassels? Ones that have vibrant colours, are hand-dyed and handmade and don’t pollute the world with more plastics? I do, and I’ll tell you what, it ain’t on Amazon! I know where to buy the most high-quality tassels, and support the small business who makes them, because I’ve tried lots, from loads of different places. This has been a pricey endeavour, which you don’t have to do because I’ve made the mistakes for you and swallowed that cost so you don’t have to.

Additionally, I have a Cricut machine, two different circle cutters, 1mm - 10mm hole punches, a glue gun, swatch books, Adobe Creative Cloud and one hell of a steady scalpel hand. So there’s that, too 😜

7. Time and Stress

So here’s the deal. You can get exactly what you want, all the designs and finishes that work for your day, across every element of your wedding. You can chill out, and just wait for it all to be delivered - pixel and millimetre perfect. The catch - It costs money.

Alternatively, you can create everything yourself - for free! You just need time, patience and some resources to work out sizes, file types, colour-formatting, print-preparation and some tools for crafting.

Let it be known - There’s no judgement from me either way. It’s your day and you deserve to spend the celebrations however you so please. If you do decide you’d like a professional helping hand, then I’ll be here and will welcome you with open arms! Just get in touch.

8. Don’t just take my word for it!

I asked some of my couples why they feel working with a graphic designer holds value for them. Here’s what they said -

We wanted to work with a graphic designer because we knew we didn't want a templated, cookie-cutter wedding. We wanted our day to reflect our personalities and the things we like, but still align with our personal style and the colour scheme. Collaborating with Carly, who knows much more than we do about design and fonts and colours, enabled us to bring our vision to life far better than sourcing and creating everything ourselves would've done.

- SOPHIE + SHAUN

Hiring a graphic designer has been the absolute best decision we made as part of the wedding planning process. Carly has helped us develop what was little more than a fragment of an idea into a whole brand, we have the most cohesive vision. It is so nice to know everything is comprehensive and fluid.

The process has allowed us to capture our personalities in a wedding logo that makes everything feel more personal from the get-go. Carly took the time to get to know us and the little details that therefore made their way into our logo and design has meant that everyone who knows us describes our wedding aesthetic and style as a perfect fit for us.

- GEMMA + MARNEE

If you want to create a cohesive, personal and beautiful brand, give me a shout!

Carly ✌️