Wedding Invitations | Etiquette | Tips

I shared these tips on my Facebook page almost a year ago but since I’m asked all of these questions so often I thought it’d be great to share again.

This is going to be a 2 part series on wedding invitations, etiquette and tips. For both posts, these are the most common things that I’m asked about during the invitation process.

The first part is tips for the couple (and/or parents) when sending out invitations.

• It is NEVER okay to ask for money on your invitations. Do not put anything pertaining to “cash preferred” and also do not include your registry info on your wedding invitation. Doing so takes the emphasis off of “Please share our special day with us” and instead says “Please bring us a gift”.  A wedding is not about receiving gifts.  Save the registry info for your shower invitations. If you’re not having a shower because you’ve been living together for quite some time, it’s still not appropriate to reference anything about money on the invitations. Odds are that guests that are asking about a registry prefer to give an actual gift versus cash and are going to bring a gift regardless.
• When addressing wedding invitations, it’s proper etiquette to use Mr., Mrs., Ms., Miss instead of just “Bob and Sue Jones”. It’s also proper to use the full name and not a nickname – Robert vs. Bob for example.
• Be prepared that you can’t please everyone (if you haven’t already realized this at this stage in your planning, you’ve lucked out). Some people may be upset that you’re not inviting children to the wedding. Your parents may be upset that you don’t want to invite a distant cousin/uncle/aunt/friend that you haven’t seen in 10 years. That’s ok, it’s not their wedding, it’s yours. However, if your parents are paying for the wedding and really want said cousin/aunt/uncle/friend, then that’s a different story.
• For your response date, give about a week between the date you request them back and the date that the caterer/venue needs a final headcount. There are always stragglers so you want to give a little time for those so you’re not stressing that you don’t have them all back.
• On your response cards, consider numbering the back (very small in a corner) so you can keep track as they come in. That way if a guest doesn’t put their name on it (yes this happens), you can easily flip it over and match the number on the back of the card to the number of that guest on your list and know who it is.