Everything in the Gilded Laurel shop is designed to be printed at home, on an ordinary printer, on ordinary paper. No special equipment, no print shop unless you want one. This page covers the few settings that matter.
Choose the right file
Your download includes two versions of the same planner:
- US Letter — 8.5 × 11in. Use this in the United States and Canada.
- A4 — 210 × 297mm. Use this in the UK, Europe, Australia and most everywhere else.
You only need one of them. If you are not sure, look at a sheet of paper already in your printer — if it is slightly taller and narrower than the American size, it is A4.
The one setting that matters
In your print dialogue, find the scaling option and set it to 100%, or Actual size.
If it says Fit to page or Shrink oversized pages, turn it off. This is the single most common reason a print-at-home PDF comes out looking wrong — it shrinks the whole page by a few percent, which pulls the margins in and can drop the finest gold rules out entirely.
The margins are already set correctly in the file. Your printer does not need to help.
Paper
Ordinary printer paper works perfectly well, and most brides use it. If you would like the planner to feel like the object it was designed to be, a heavier uncoated stock — anywhere from 100 to 160gsm — makes a noticeable difference, and takes pencil beautifully.
Choose a warm or natural white rather than a bright white. The planner is designed on a soft ivory, and bright white paper fights it slightly.
Colour or black and white
Print in colour if you can. The gold is a large part of why the pages look the way they do, and it renders as flat grey in black and white. The planner is still perfectly usable in monochrome — it simply loses some of its warmth.
What to print, and how many
- Print once: the cover, contents, the four checklist pages, the two budget spreads, the seating chart, the day-of timeline, and the notes page.
- Print several times: the guest list — one sheet holds twenty-two households, so most weddings need two or three.
- Print twice: the vendor directory. Keep one with the planner and give one to whoever is running the day.
Single or double sided
Single sided. The pages are designed to be written on, and a planner you can lay flat and spread across a table is far easier to work with than one printed back to back.
Keeping it together
A simple ring binder or a document wallet is all it needs. Punching the left edge works well — the margins allow for it. Some brides take the printed pages to a local print shop for a spiral or wire binding, which costs very little and makes it feel finished.
Using a print shop
Send them the PDF as it is and ask for it printed at 100%, single sided, on uncoated stock. They will know what that means. Do not let them scale it to fit — the file is already the correct size.
If something looks wrong
Nine times out of ten it is the scaling setting. Check that first. If it still is not right, email us with a photo of what came out and we will work out what happened.