You know every detail of your wedding, down to where everyone will be seated during dinner — but your guests don’t know a thing. That’s why you send out wedding invitations: to give your guests the information they’ll need to celebrate with you on your Big Day. However, as wedding traditions change, invitations are changing too, so many soon-to-be brides and grooms simply don’t know what is supposed to go on their invites.
The larger and more elaborate the invitation, the higher the cost. By knowing what information you have to include on your invitations, you can save money while ensuring your guests get to the right place at the right time. Here’s a run-down of wedding invite must-haves, and some tips and tricks for fitting it all in.
The Event
The first question most invitees will have upon receiving your invite is “What’s this?” That’s why it’s perhaps most important for you to clearly label your event as a wedding right up top.Fortunately, it is easy to do this with a formal invitation. It is traditional for the parents of the bride to invite guests, usually with a phrase like:
“Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Weasley cordially invite you to the wedding of their daughter Ginevra Molly Weasley with Harry James Potter.”
However, if your parents aren’t involved in the wedding — or if you don’t want such a fussy invite — you can do something like this:
“Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter invite you to the chosen wedding.”
Because you can order custom wedding invitations for a relatively low cost, you can experiment with the event’s wording to suit your needs.
The Date and Time
You don’t want guests showing up to your wedding a day early, and you don’t want them stumbling into the venue in the middle of the ceremony, either. To ensure that everyone gets to your wedding on time, you should make sure the date and time are easy to find on the invitation.
You should be as clear as possible with your wording. Instead of writing “04/06/20,” you should write “April 6th, 2020” to prevent anyone from mixing up the month and date accidentally. Similarly, you should be direct with the time of the event, writing “in the morning” or “in the evening” for clarification. It might be wise to print an earlier time on the invitations, to give latecomers extra time to get seated before the ceremony starts in earnest.
The Location
Most guests hold onto the wedding invitation and use it to navigate to the ceremony and reception. Sometimes, the invitation is a necessary ticket into an exclusive venue. Thus, you need to include the location of the wedding somewhat prominently on the invite, to include the name of the venue and its street address. If you have extra space, perhaps on the back of the invitation, you might also add a map or directions — but this isn’t mandatory.
The Wedding Website
Finally, the last thing that is absolutely necessary to include on your mailed invitations is the address to your wedding website. Here, you can include all manner of other informationthat guests might need to know, like expectations about attire, where to find your registry and how to RSVP. By including all these elements online instead of in your invitations, you can reduce the size of your invitation suite, cutting costs that might be better spent elsewhere. Plus, you can customize your website with even more fun content, such as the story of your relationship or plans for your next steps after your marriage. Older guests enjoy these details, which enhance the romance of the event.
The truth is that you can include whatever you want in your wedding invitations; like every other aspect of your Big Day, your invites should suit your wishes first and everyone else’s expectations second. If you want your invitations to take the form of a novella, printed on handmade paper embedded with wildflower seeds, you can do that.
Ultimately, the goal of invitations is to tell your loved ones when and where to be so they can celebrate with you. By including these standard bits of info, you can communicate the most important details to your guests concisely, all but ensuring that the most significant people in your life show up to your big day.
