Make Your Own Wine Labels + Free Printables!

A Step-by-Step Tutorial for an Inexpensive and Customizable Wine Gift

Weddings often serve as the bridge between fantasy and reality, a medium where it’s perfectly acceptable to coordinate layer upon layer of orchestrated details ranging from rose-strewn balconies to piazza fountains overflowing with rosé.

Kind of like The Matrix, but more romantic...and a lot more booze.

Even if you aren’t the most creative person on the planet, weddings provide a golden opportunity to push the envelope with regard to party décor. Anyone within the sphere of the bride and groom can take a stab at it!

You can customize any or all of the following:

• seating assignment place cards
• Thank You cards
• guest books
• invitations
• table décor
• party favors

Just pick a cohesive design and go nuts! And thanks to free design programs such as PicMonkey and Canva (Canva now offers professional label templates!) you don’t need have any special certifications to put a personal stamp on your wedding.
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Bridesmaid proposals have garnered a lot of attention in recent years. With the cost of this assignment being upwards of 1,000 bucks a pop, it’s nice to put in the extra time to show your bridal party how much you appreciate them.

Wine is to wedding parties what cookies are to toddlers, which is why this tutorial should be helpful for a variety of different situations within that context.

Other great reasons to customize a wine label:

PicMonkey and Canva are fairly straightforward when it comes to fonts, backgrounds, graphics and other special customizations. To that end, you could also use a simpler Microsoft Office program such as Word or PowerPoint.

Aside from making the design, the only real legwork involved is buying your labels. My go-to brand is Avery. You can buy them online or in person at most major craft stores. (I got mine at Hobby Lobby and Walmart.) With Avery you have the option to load your design directly onto their site, then print straight from your home computer. No trip to the store or waiting in line.

If you've ever designed a return address label, you can design a wine label! That's how easy it is.

Disclosure: this list includes affiliate products, which means I will make a small commission (at no additional cost to you) should you purchase any of the following recommendations. 

Making Your DIY Wine Labels

1. Determine the size of your label. I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of soaking my 750 mL wine bottle and then peeling away layers of adhesive, so I picked a 4x6 label size (Avery Template 5292). It was larger than my existing label and worked in either portrait or landscape orientation. The “body” of my rosé bottles was pear-shaped, so I went with a 2 ½ x 3 ¾ size labels (Avery Template 41444). You can't even tell there's a label behind the new one.
2. Purchase your Avery label.
3. Create your design in the program of your choosing. Save it as a JPG or PNG for best results.
4. Create a basic Avery account or login to your existing one.
5. Search for the specific template to match the label design you purchased, then upload your image.
6. Print from your computer, remembering to load your label paper and change the custom settings on your printer screen.
7. Carefully apply the label to your bottle. The 4x6 labels have a tendency to ripple, so I recommend going verrrrry slowly and carefully. They also have a tendency to go on crooked, so hold the label slightly away from your body to get more of a universal look at how it's lying on the bottle.

To really tip the scales in your favor, add a personal note about what it would mean to have your friend as your bridesmaid.

The label featured above is the circular 2-inch diameter Avery Template 4227. The wines featured in this setup were produced by Bella Bollé Wine, courtesy of Walmart - because I'm classy like that.

Note a 4x6 label will work for both 750 mL and 1.5 L bottles. Did I mention the labels cost a whopping $3?

You can download the design above by clicking the image below. Drag it to your desktop or right click and save it as a JPEG. Unfortunately PDF files do not work well with Avery's template system. For personal use only, please.

There are crafty brides out there who may still need to outsource a project like this on a grander scale. I recommend checking out Etsy or a site like Evermine. Evermine caters to the food-and-beverage label market; they're also capable of handling custom bulk orders for larger groups (100+) of people. For DIY'ers, their blog is chock full of helpful stuff like wine label tutorials and sizing guides.

**If you like the chalkboard featured on the buffet table, see my easy 5 Step Process for Creating Your Own Chalkboard Sign.