Both of these software products enable you to print your own wedding invitations and all accessory papers. Both are from the same software vendor. There are no other consumer oriented software products like these. The vendor, ED/iT, has established itself as the market leader. Until we identify competing software product, we can only offer to compare these two.

Both products include the ability to print Invitations, Announcements, Responds, Reception Cards, Place Cards, Pew Cards, Direction Cards, Thank You Notes, At Home Cards, your Wedding Program and all the envelopes.

Both products include socially perfect wordings for each paper in the paper ensemble. And since you probably do not have any fonts (lettering styles) that are designed for invitations, the software includes fonts.

ED/iT claims that their typesetting produces invitations identical to the ones you get from the big wedding imprinting companies. We replicated the same wordings on some sample invitations from commercial printers and the size of the printing and spacing between the lines was identical for those fonts that closely matched.

Both products have the ability to print what they call personalized invitations. After we filled out the Guest List and selected one of the personalized wordings, we printed invitations that included each guest name in the wording . . . very nice! It does the same thing for Respond Cards and Place Cards. You can even include the table number that you asssign. (Commercial printers can only supply generic cards for these and you must hand write the person's name.)

The Complete Social Publisher differs from The Complete Wedding Publisher in that it not only covers weddings, but also covers all the social events associated with weddings. This means the Engagment Announcements, Bride's Party, Bride's Maid Party, Rehearsal Dinner, Bachelor Dinner and so on. It also handles Anniversaries, Reaffirmations, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, Graduations, Baptisms, Christenings, Birthdays, Dinner Parties, Garden and Tea Parties . . . about 40 social events.

Until a few years ago, you could not find blank wedding invitation paper stock. Now, with the release of ED/iT's wedding printing software, there are over 15 paper suppliers that will sell you blank stock or even wedding kits. The leaders include Geographics, Southworth, LCI Paper, Paperstruck, Paper Direct, and several others. Both of ED/iT's software products cover over 500 paper designs from these paper suppliers. The nice thing is that the software 'knows' the paper size, wording locations, envelope sizes, for every paper. You do not have to make any measurements. The software also includes 180 (wedding) graphics or 480 (social) graphics that you can print using plain paper if you are in a bind. And the software includes a custom feature which lets you enter the dimensions of any paper. This is great if you found some paper stock not already covered by their software.

The Complete Wedding Publisher $29.95 and the Social version is $39.95. This PC software (no MAC versions) is available for a free 30 day trial directly on their web site at WWW.ED-IT.COM/WEDDING.