All Things Wedding Invitations

Do you get stressed out just thinking about putting together your wedding invitations? You may ask what information do I need to include? I have a blended family, how do I include everyone? I don’t want kids at my wedding, how do I convey that nicely? If I have a wedding website, do I really need RSVP cards? My goal is to answer all these questions and more with this blog post, so stick with me here!

Starting at the beginning, you need to decide what kind of invites you are looking for. As a couple, do you like to be more formal or are you a little more casual? For the more formal invites I would recommend looking online at Minted or, here in the Spokane/CdA area, get in touch with local vendor, Mango Ink. Their team has a vintage printing press and personally creates all the invitation designs. If you are looking for a more casual design based around pictures, I would recommend looking at the Zazzle and Shutterfly websites. Bonus… they are always running some kind of sale so pay attention to when that sale incorporates invitations/paper goods.

No matter what kind of invitation you decide on, the information is laid out very similar. Starting at the top with your names. How you do this depends on if and how you would like to include your family. Some examples are more formal than others:

“Together with their families, __________ and _________ request your presence at their wedding”

“Mr. & Mrs. _________ and Mr. & Mrs. __________ request the honor of your company at the wedding of their children __________ and ___________”

“Mr. & Mrs. __________ request the pleasure of your presence at the wedding of their daughter/son _________ to ___________”

“____________ and __________ invite you to share in their wedding celebration”

Next comes the date, time and location. It may seem silly, but even if you list the date always make sure you list the day of the week too – especially if you are not having your wedding on a Saturday. Just remember, in this kind of situation the more information the better. On that same note, for the location(s) always put the address along with the venue name. Google is not perfect, so when your guests enter in your wedding venue in the search bar, they can cross check the address or, even better, just enter the address itself and eliminate any confusion.

At the bottom of the main invite, you need to tell your guests what’s next and if they are expected to RSVP. This can include different things. Do you have a specific attire you would like your guests to follow? List that out. “Cocktail attire”. “Semi formal attire”. Or are you forgoing paper RSVP cards and asking your guests to RVSP on your website? Make that very clear. “Please RSVP on our website: www._________.com” Or, if you have no instructions for them, you can simply end your invite with a “Reception to follow”, “Let’s eat, drink and be married”, “Merriment to follow”.

Now… what other cards should be included with the invite in the envelope? Well, that depends, on your desires. If you are not asking your guests to RSVP to a website, you will absolutely need to include a RSVP card. Ask them to respond with their name(s), if they will or will not be attending, how many attendees and what they would like to eat if you are serving dinner with multiple options. As a bonus for your guests, include an already addressed and stamped envelope so all they have to do is fill it out and pop it in the mail. Making it as simple as possible for them to return it to you.

Are you hosting a destination wedding or are most of your guests going to be coming in from out of town? Make sure you either include a hotel information sheet or put that tab on your wedding website. If you are doing a destination wedding, it is likely that you are creating a whole wedding weekend for some of your guests. There are a lot of cute cards out there to create a weekend timeline for your guests to know what activities are happening when and where – from the welcome party to rehearsal dinner to the morning after brunch.

Okay, let’s quickly discuss what sometimes is the elephant in the room for some couples… kids. If you decide you are comfortable with inviting kids to the wedding just know that you will need to open that up to everyone. Unless you have a specific child or younger sibling who is the only child you are wanting to invite, people will get their feelings hurt if you start getting picky over which kids you invite. It is kind of an “all or nothing” situation. You will then want to address your invites either including the children (“Sue, George, Madeline and Tucker”) or simply address them with “+ Family” if you do not know their kid’s names or if they have more than 2 kids (i.e. “Parker Family” or “Sue, George + Family”). On the flip side if you would prefer parents not bring their children there are a couple ways to handle this. First off, make sure you are addressing the envelope to exactly who you are inviting (“Sue & George Parker”). Then on the RSVP card make sure you put either “adults only” on the bottom or something like “we want you to be able to enjoy a night free of responsibility, so we request that you leave the kiddos at home”. This way you are addressing that you would like the party to be adults only but doing it as nicely as possible.

That pretty much covers most of the common questions! You have your invitations built! Of course, there are other details you can include such as entertainment areas around town (for the out of towners) or if you are having specific transportation to/from the venue make sure to include that on your hotel information card, but don’t overload your envelopes with too many different cards because many times the receiver can be overwhelmed and doesn’t read it all or loses one of the smaller cards. Hopefully now you feel confident that you are passing along all the necessary information to your guests and you are avoiding fielding as many of those unnecessary questions as possible!

If you found this article helpful and want to chat further, head on over to the services page for my packages and pricing information. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me or leave a comment below! And if you want more information about how to create your wedding website and what to include there, head over to my Wedding Website 101 blog post!

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