Finding Graphic Elements for Wedding Invitations

If you’re designing wedding invitations, you likely have wondered where to find graphics for your invites. There are a ton of places that you can find graphic elements, but which ones are you allowed to use on wedding invites?

In this post, I’ll share all of my favorite places as a professional wedding invitation designer to get design elements. These design elements can include watercolors, florals, wreaths, photographs, and plenty of other items that you might find useful for your wedding stationery! 

Some of these links are affiliate links, meaning I will make a small commission if you purchase at no additional cost to you. 

Graphic Element Licenses

Before I share where to buy elements – please, I beg you, follow correct licensing rules. If you’re using an element for your personal invitations, the license will likely be more lenient, cost less, or might even be free. If you’re doing this for a paid client, however, check your licensing restrictions carefully. You will need a commercial license to use elements on paid work.

Commercial licenses are usually limited up to a specific number of end products. So if you’re printing 100 invitations, and you purchase a license for 5,000 end products, you’re totally fine. You’d need to re-purchase or purchase a larger license if you wanted more than 5,000 end products. In general, you also cannot use a commercial license for templates that the client will edit themselves. So if you’re selling on Canva, Corjl or Templett, for instance, you will need a more extensive license and your standard commercial license will not suffice. Template licenses are usually quite expensive. 

Another general rule of thumb is that mega corporations typically do not license their work to smaller creators. Think Disney, Marvel, Taylor Swift, pro sports teams etc. You likely will see designs with elements from these companies – just because someone else is doing it, doesn’t mean it is legally okay and that you can do it. If you’re running a business, you do not want to violate copyrights or trademarks under any circumstances. No job is worth that.

So now that you understand a little bit about licensing these elements, where can you find them?

Creative Market

Creative Market is my first stop for any sort of graphic element or font. They have a ton of watercolors, florals, and vector elements of all kinds. Their overall aesthetic tends toward things like wedding invitations, so it’s a great place to look first!

RawPixel

RawPixel has an incredible collection of graphics too! I really like their Public Domain images, which are images that are pretty much a free-for-all license because they’re a bit older or their creators have released them to the public domain. You may have seen those vintage watercolor floral drawings – those are typically from the public domain database, and RawPixel makes it really easy to search theirs.

They also have a ton of other collections as well, though. You purchase a membership to their commercial design license, and you get a larger collection, especially if you want elements that are already cleaned-up PNGs with transparent backgrounds. They have been adding a lot of beautiful AI-generated graphics recently which are fun to use. I used these AI-generated lemon graphics on my own baby shower invites! 

VectorStock

I mostly use VectorStock for vector elements and photos! It’s a great collection, and you can purchase a membership for a certain number of downloads per month. 

Unsplash

Unsplash is great for photos, and much of their collection is free, even for commercial use! 

Creative Fabrica

Creative Fabrica is like Creative Market, in that it has a little bit of everything. It’s got a few additional categories such as Print on Demand, which is full of products specifically licensed for Print on Demand products. Creative Fabrica is connected to some template sites like Corjl, so you can use some of their fonts and elements on templates, although you just need to check the license specifically. 

Canva

The Noun Project

Vecteezy

Another great one for vector elements and photos. I typically don’t start here on Vecteezy, but they show up when you Google certain items that you’re looking for a lot!

Adobe Stock

This one I mostly use for photos. If you already have an Adobe Creative Cloud plan, you can get better rates on Adobe Stock or sometimes your plan will come with some free downloads. 

Etsy

Almost everything you can find on Creative Market you can also find on Etsy, however sometimes it’s even cheaper on Etsy for the same thing (I sell on both so I can say this is because Etsy takes a smaller cut!). Typically I will put the word “clipart” after my search terms on Etsy, because Etsy also sells so many physical goods. You’ll have to check each listing for the licensing information though, as every shop on Etsy will have their own licensing restrictions. 

Custom

If you’re looking for something custom, there are SO many talented artists that can help you create something. In our free Facebook group for Invitation Designers, Stationery Squad, we have a database of artists that love to create artwork for other stationers! This will of course cost you a little more, but is perfect if you or your clients want something very specific like a venue watercolor or a custom pet portrait. 

Let us know where your favorite places to find graphic elements for wedding invitations are, and if you’re planning to try any of these sites out!