Vistaprint- how did you print with an Etsy template?

Following. I am wondering the same things!

So I did the exact thing you are asking about. I ordered my template from Etsy, printed it on premium matte 8x11 flyer paper and I ended up not liking the paper at all. They were a little thicker than a regular piece of paper aka v flimsy.

I got with Vistaprint about wanting to reorder on better paper and they refunded my money. I cropped the PDF to fit on a 5x7 invitation and used their premium stock paper. I loved them a lot more and I didn't have to worry about cutting them myself. It was 100% worth the extra money I spent!

I would tell the sender to just send the 5x7 separately. Paper quality is not the same for the flyer.

Actually, you should be able to order it as a 5x7 invite on Vistaprint without cropping. Just upload the image and then zoom it in so you only have one side centered, and your other side is off the canvas and won't be printed. You don't want to have to cut them all when you get them, because you might end up with one long side that looks shaggier than the other if your paper cutter isn't extremely sharp. And you'll have to trim the top and bottom too. It'll take a lot of time and frustration and possibly ruining a few.

Edit: I just tried to do it with a big horizontal image to see what it would do. It actually auto-corrected for me and only included the left side of the image in the frame. If it does this for you and doesn't center it correctly, you can click the picture, and then crop/rotate, and tell it to scale to fit. That way you see the whole picture and you can resize it accordingly to center where you want it to.

Following! I have been curious about this too!

I didn’t print my invitations using VistaPrint but I also bought my invitations from Etsy. I purchased 2 boxes of invitations from Hobby Lobby when they were half off $24. They are really nice premium cardstock. I printed them at OfficeMax they charge .15 cents for black and white print job. All my prints costed me $8.30.
If you don’t like the feel or thickness of plain cardstock linen is also a very nice alternative.