Showcase of beautiful invitations in TeX

Question

I'm interested in using TeX and friends to produce beautifully typeset invitations (for parties, weddings, and especially thesis defences). I understand that there is a package gcard for making folded greeting cards, but it's fairly simple. I would love to see a list of, or links to, more sophisticated-looking examples for inspiration and motivation. (If the complete source code is freely available and adaptable, so much the better.)

Answer 1

I made an invitation using Xe/LuaLaTeX and a TikZ fading over an OpenStreetMap generated map excerpt. Here is a link to the map I used (I don't know how long it is valid).

\documentclass{article}
\pagestyle{empty}
\usepackage{geometry,fontspec,tikz}
\geometry{a6paper,landscape,hmargin={1cm,1cm},vmargin={1cm,1cm}}
\setmainfont[Ligatures=TeX]{Adobe Garamond Pro}
\usetikzlibrary{fadings}
\tikzfading[name=fade right,
left color=transparent!0,
right color=transparent!100]
\setlength\parindent{0pt}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[overlay,remember picture]
  \node[anchor=east,inner sep=0pt] (pic) at (current page.east)
    {\includegraphics[height=\pdfpageheight]{map}};
  \fill[white,path fading=fade right] (pic.north west) rectangle (pic.south east);
  \coordinate (pin) at (12,-2.5);
  \filldraw[ultra thick,draw=red,fill=red!50] (pin) -- ++(70:.5) arc (-20:200:.18) -- cycle;
  \path (pin) -- ++(0,.5) node[draw,fill,red,circle,inner sep=1pt] {};
\end{tikzpicture}%
\obeylines%
{\addfontfeatures{Scale=3,LetterSpace=10} INVITATION}

\bigbreak
\textit{%
  Dear friend,

  I'd love to invite you to my party.

  Sincerly, your friend.
}

\vfill

{\addfontfeatures{Scale=1.4,LetterSpace=5}\scshape when?}
\textit{%
  December 24\/\rlap{,}\textsuperscript{th} 2015
  8\kern.5pt:\kern.5pt30 pm
}
\medbreak
{\addfontfeatures{Scale=1.4,LetterSpace=5}\scshape where?}
\textit{%
  Times Square,
  London E1,
  UK
}
\end{document}

Answer 2

Thanks to everyone who's posted a sample invitation here. For my own purposes, I decided in the end to go with something a bit different. I'm posting it here in case anyone else would like to adapt it for themselves.

The invitation is printed on textured, A4-size card stock, folded in half to make A5 pages. The inner page of the invitation uses a decorative border from the frontispiece of Quadrans Astrolabicus, a 1534 book written by Oronce Finé and printed in Paris by Simon de Colines. The text is set in EB Garamond with occasional use of fancy ligatures and coloured initials. Here's what it looks like:

I also used the labels package to produce personalized RSVP cards.

Here is a PDF demonstrating the inner page, outer page, and RSVP cards.

The complete and freely licensed XeLaTeX source code is available on GitHub.

Answer 3

This is not an invitation, but Paulo sent me this really nice christmas card. Thank you, Paulo!

Answer 4

I wrote one up in my article on using Zapfino in Omega: http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb24-2/tb77adams.pdf

Answer 5

This is more like a poster, but would work for a flyer as well:

Here are links to the source file and to the pdf version.

Answer 6

I made an invitation recently. This thread was very helpful, along with:

• The LaTeX Font Catalog
• the pgfornament package

Source: https://gitlab.com/bengreenman/wedding-invitation

Answer 7

Not an invitation, but a Christmas card.

Most relevant packages for the graphics:

• EBGaramond (font)
• PGFOrnament

Includes source code on back, typeset with listings. Folding marks made manually with TikZ.

Print on A4 paper, cut off bottom bar, fold in the middle and it perfectly fits inside a DL envelope.

Source: https://github.com/Kamik423/christmas-card-2019

I created an updated version vor 2021, this time using the Antykwa Półtawskiego font. Especially this last one was very much inspired by this post.