My brother has asked me to design all of the stuff for his wedding (invites, place settings and that) which is really nice of him but I did have to try and tell him that I'm massively underqualified to do anything professional looking. I have been trying to get to grips with design work though so he's said I should use this to get some practice, which is cool. He's offered to pay for some publishing software if I can find the right one, so what should I use? Bearing in mind I don't want to rinse him for several hundred pounds, nor do I need anything particularly powerful, it's only wedding invites after all. I do want to step up from MS Publisher etc though, and find something a bit more creative that I could play with for later work.

I have a specific idea which involves using text which is filled from one image overlaid on another, like this but much, much less sinister:
http://hbowatch.com/images/True-Detective-HBO-Series.jpg
Is this a relatively easy technique?

Ta.