Creating our Save the Dates: Step 2 - Finding the Fonts

Once I knew what direction I wanted to go in for the save the dates, my next step was finding the perfect fonts but since I'm trying to stay on a budget I couldn't get carried away. I limited my search to the FREE font sites like www.1001freefonts.com & www.urbanfonts.com. I wanted to have a handwritten look to the invitations so I narrowed my search accordingly.

This is a sample of text from my actual STDs, using the fonts I chose...

{Sketch Rockwell - Bold}

{Kaileen}

Although the heart over the i's & j's sold me on the Kaileen font, it does have a downside. The 1's and /'s are replaced with little girls making the wedding date and website address awkward to read. Case in point...

So I downloaded a similar font to the Kaileen to substitute the 1's and /'s....I wasn't giving up those hearts!

{Ashley for ONLY the 1's}

After I downloaded the fonts to my desk top I needed to get them installed so that I could use them in Word, where I was creating the STDs.

(I don't have Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop on my computer anymore and didn't want to pay $1000 so I'm making Microsoft Office work for me...I might have to reevaluate come invitation time.)

To install fonts for Microsoft Office use you need to install them in Windows, not the software itself like you would with Adobe. Below is a simple step by step for installing fonts into Windows 7, which is what I have on this computer. It is slightly different for Windows 2000 and I've noted the additional steps. (I've never used Vista so I can't speak to that one)

1. You will first need to go to your Local Disk Drive (usually the C:)
2. Inside that folder locate your Windows Folder and click on it
3. Inside the Windows folder locate the Fonts folder and click on it
4. In Windows 7 all you need to do is grab and drag the downloaded font that is saved to your desktop into the font folder. It will install by itself. Easy Peesy!
   
5. Now if you are in Windows 2000 you will need to go to the File tab in the Font folder and select "Install New Font". A new window will pop up, from there you will use the browse function to locate the fonts saved on your desktop, select all the files you want installed and click OK. All done!
6. Once you have installed the fonts you can open up any Microsoft Office program and find the font listed in the font drop down list.

Please remember that if you email the document to another computer that hasn't installed the fonts they will be replaced with another of Windows default fonts, such as Ariel. If you just want to send it to the printers or show a friend what you have done I suggest saving the file as a PDF or a JPEG so that the font turns into a picture and doesn't change. If you need to edit it at another computer you should email the font files along with it and install them on that computer...which is what I did when I moved it back and forth from my work and home computers.

I hope this was helpful to someone! Did I miss anything?