Weddingbee boards

I did mine on Photoshop, but I know lots of people on here have downloaded the trial of Adobe Illustrator.

I downloaded the free trial of Illustrator and religiously read Miss Hawk's tutorials. That girl is sooooo smart! I posted my invitation for some of the bees to critique, and they've really done an amazing job. I would also have to lend my vote to Illustrator. It's so easy to line everything up and make it perfect. Love!

I used cards and pockets for my supplies as well.  They have a blank template on there for your use for sizing and such.  I made many copies of my intives and am in the process of doing them now.  Here they are:

You might also consider Photoshop Elements. The version I have (out-of-date by two updates) isn't as powerful as the current ones in terms of control over details in the text, and it is not nearly as good as InDesign or Illustrator. However, it's much more affordable so it's more likely you can buy it and use it long term for other photo-related projects. I never would have thought of it as a viable option at all until I started playing around with digital scrapbooking and found it far more flexibile than I imagined.

That said, I find InDesign incredibly easy to use for publishing something like this, and that's what I'll use since I have a full version. Illustrator is better if you plan on using lots of vector elements. I find it a bit more intimidating to use as a non-graphic designer, but that's just me.

it's not a very clear picture but i did mine in indesign.  i was going to use illustrator but i needed more layout and typography capabilities.  (not that illustrator did not have many of the features but indesign was just easier to use.  when i designed a friend's baby shower invite, i did everything in illustrator because it didn't require a lot of formatting.)

i pulled the template from wedding chicks into illustrator and edited the vector graphic to change the colors.  i then use various pieces of the graphic to design the inserts.  i had four total (three step/layered) and a fourth was a standard A2 size response card that i tucked behind the other inserts.  i didn't want the invite to look incomplete after people returned the response card.  i also designed the emblem on the bellyband and had them made into 2x2 stickers.

if you are planning on doing pretty plain font with little graphics then the cards and pockets site has word templates.  i looked everywhere for templates to use but none were the right size so i had to start from scratch.  publisher and other programs will also work if you do not need much layout or editing capability. 

that said, indesign and ilustrator are not cheap or easy to use programs.  i didn't know how to use either programs when i started and it wasn't easy to learn.

at first i tried photoshop but it rasterized the graphics and it wasn't clear. 

if you have a friend in graphic design, you might be able to get them to help you out.  or you can contact someone to design them in indesign and send you high quality pdfs for printing.