Wedding Invitations

Wording Wedding Invitations

Ah, the wedding day, a day when you feel like the whole world revolves around you and your partner.

What joy, what enthusiasm…what a disaster if there is no world to revolve around you. Everything went according to plan until you forgot about the wedding invitations. It’s true, this sort of thing doesn’t come very often but you have to keep in mind that it could happen, especially when you find yourself under time pressure. Luckily wedding planners are there to the rescue.

Except the fact that wedding invitations have their great importance, because they are a long lasting custom, we are now talking about a strong wedding invitation etiquette built in these past years, so basically they are a must when it comes to organizing and planning of a wedding

The first and most important thing about a wedding invitation has to be the wording or the spelling formulas. Either being a traditional or an exotic wedding ceremony, the wording has to contain the basic sentences for inviting a person to a celebration and the strict information about the wedding.

Distinguished sentence formulas are most appreciated at a wedding invitation since they show a certain degree of knowledge, personality or style.There are numerous tips about how should one compose the expression sentences in a wedding invitation and the following are just a small part of them.

A common wedding invitation can starts with: “Please, join us for a celebration of  friendship, love and family, as (name of the bride) and (name of the groom) together with (first the name of the bride’s parents) and (the name of the groom’s parents), request for your blessing in this wonderful matrimonial day…” It is common when one of the parents is deceased to mention the name in a newspaper announcement like: “Mary Rilley, the daughter of (name of the parent still alive) and the late (name of the deceased parent).

The name of the bride is mentioned first on the wedding invitation card, using first and middle name, then the name of the groom, in the same order with both title and middle name.

Traditionally the bride’s parents were the ones hosting the wedding and paying for it so their names were the first listed on a wedding invitation card. Since there are often cases when the bride and groom pay for their own wedding, the lines would look like this: “(Name of bride) and (Name of groom), together with their families…”.

You have the names right so don’t forget about the location and the exact date of the wedding ceremony and party.

Usually the date and time are written using words not numbers, and they are capitalized so it would look like this: “Sunday, the tenth of December, two thousand and seven, at half after three o’clock in the afternoon”; the simple version can be: “Sunday, December 10, 2007, at 3.30 p.m.”

The location should have the address written after it only if it is not known, and you can also include a map with the directions.

Make sure to let your guests know if there is an after party or a reception after the wedding ceremony, like: “Reception to follow at…” or “Dancing and dessert to follow”.

If you would like children to attend to the after party make sure to mention it or if not just write: “Adult reception”; you can also include information about the attire but it is not necessary.

The R.S.V.P. was written so that guests would reply about whether they are attending to the wedding or not, but you can include a white card and specifically request for an attendance response.

So there you have it! Some simple wedding invitation etiquette rules for your perfect wedding ceremony day.