Sending Invitations Online: Is it Proper Etiquette?

In today’s world, it’s easier than ever to be in touch through email. When planning your wedding, it may be tempting to invite your guests through email for convenience, but this isn’t advised. For everyday events, this may be appropriate, but your wedding day is a special occasion and people tend to appreciate invitations on paper.

A paper invitation creates a personal and special touch. Your wedding day is one of the most special days in your life and sending paper invitations is one way of expressing that. The invitations don’t have to be elaborate. Simple invitations can be just as elegant.

Another drawback in using email for invitations is that you never know by what some may get lost in transit or go into the junk folder and never be seen. Invitations can get lost through snail mail, but not that often.

You can use email to follow up on invitations such as giving more detailed directions, hotel accommodations or answering any questions your guests may have.

Of course there are always exceptions. If you are having a small or very informal wedding and you feel comfortable sending invitations by email and know your guests will feel comfortable, it may be appropriate. But, in general, it’s best to use paper invitations.

Wedding Etiquette For Invitations

The wedding invitation that your guests will receive is the first impression of what kind of wedding they are being invited to. There are certain rules of etiquette that have developed over the years when it comes to wedding invitations. Of course, these are not set in stone, but just some tips to keep in mind when you are preparing your wedding invitations.

Gift registry cards should only be placed in bridal shower invitations, and not your wedding ones.

Always write out addresses on your invitations by hand. Never use labels of any kind on envelopes.

Spell out everything such as Drive, Avenue, state, city, etc. Usually the only abbreviations that are acceptable on wedding invitations ar Dr., Mr., Mrs., and St.

Remember that the the kind of invitation you choose, the lettering styles, and layout of your wording will convey the feeling of what type of wedding you are planning to your guests.

Wedding Website Cards

Are you going to have a wedding website?  More and more brides-to-be are setting up a site for online RSVPs, links to the wedding registry, directions to the wedding site and contact information. One wedding I went to had a forum to arrange carpooling (a great plan for limited parking and arranging DDs ahead of time!).

DC Nearlyweds talks about getting the word out about your site.  So what’s classier than a Facebook E-vite, but won’t put a dot-com on your embossed ivory-stationary invitations?

Wedding websites are pretty much standard now and are an excellent way to get information out to your guests. One question I see a lot, though, is “how do I let people know about my website.” Etiquette is evolving and it’s generally considered acceptable to put the website on your save-the-dates but still frowned upon to put it on the actual invite (rsvp card or info card insert is o.k.).

DCNearlyweds suggests inserts from Moo Minicards. They look great, but there’s no reason you can’t make your own website inserts, if you’re crafty and have a good quality printer. Another option is to use a cheap business card service to print up some inserts, use a lovely font and a nice wedding-related pic and you’re good to go!

Self Made Invitations

Should you use self made invitations for your wedding? Many couples go this route in hopes of saving money. Others enjoy self made invitations for their wedding to make them more personable and memorable. There are several considerations to keep in mind if you decide to so self made invitations for your wedding.

One consideration is how formal is your wedding? Many couples like to have their invitations, engagement announcements, wedding announcements, thank you cards, wedding napkins and place cards all match one another. Designing your own wedding invitations means careful planning in how the design will look on all the different types of items that the design will need to be placed on. Keep in mind if you are going to use the design on other items besides the invitations.

Consider your budget. There are many places that you can get matching sets for everything for your wedding at significantly reduced prices. It can actually be more expensive to design self made invitations than to select from pre-made designs.

Consider the amount of time that you have in wedding planning. It often takes longer to plan your self-made invitations than it does for traditional invitations. You will want to allow extra time for printing and to proof the invitations before the final batch is ordered.

What will the hot wedding trends of 2008 be?

I just came across a list of wedding trends to watch out for this coming year. The trends I liked best were:

Green Weddings
…for couples who want to do their part to help the Earth. Green weddings can incorporate such things as invitations made of recycled paper, conflict-free diamond jewelry and honeymoons to eco-resorts.

Interactive Planning
Everyone has a wedding website nowadays, so why not make your wedding planning interactive? Set up a bunch of polls and have your guests vote on various aspects of the wedding (e.g., first dance? cake flavor? favors?).

Cover Bands
How cool would it be to have a Guns N’ Roses cover band at your wedding? Or… maybe that’s just me. Swing orchestras, Latin ensembles, and many other types of cover/tribute bands can add a special feel to a wedding.

Sample Stations
Wine and cheese station, chocolate station, champagne bar… yum!

Vintage Visions
More couples will aim for an old-fashioned look with dresses, suits and rings that are either genuinely vintage or cleverly designed to seem that way.

Other trends included: Switching up one’s gown or hairstyle halfway through the event, ’steel gray’ as an accent color, and having weddings at home.

Etiquette for Addressing Wedding Invitations

Wedding invitations are a very important part of the wedding.  It is important to understand how to address wedding invitations that you will be sending out to your guests.  The first thing to do is to plan ahead.  Invitations should be mailed out to your guests approximately two months before the wedding.  This is especially important if guests will be arriving from out of town. 

 

You can also place a memorial candle at the reception area or guest book signing area with a picture of the loved one.  You can even include a small framed note explaining the importance and significance that they had in your life for others to read. 

 

Another way to pay tribute to a deceased parent or someone significant in your life is to include their name in the newspaper announcement for your engagement and for your wedding.  These are great ways to honor someone and have them included in your wedding.

Wording Wedding Invitations When Multiple People Paying

In the past, it was traditional for the wedding to be paid for by the bride’s family.  In fact, normally weddings were completely paid for by the bride’s parents.  But today there are many couples that have family relations that are not your traditional parents of times past.  There are blended families, step-parents, divorced parents and it can get complex doing wedding invitation wording. 

 

You ideally want the wedding invitation to reflect who is funding the wedding.  This person is normally the one requesting that guests attend the wedding.  If the couple is paying for the wedding you should put the couple’s name as the request for attending the wedding.  If it is in conjunction with the parents then you should put together with the parents as the wording and then the couple’s names for the invitation.

 

What if the parents are divorced?  You should list the father’s name first with the prefix of Mr. and the mother’s name second with the prefix of Ms. This will make certain both names are on the wedding invites without offending anyone.

 

For friends of the family that aren’t relatives that are helping to fun the wedding you can list the friends of the bride and groom or you can list the names of the friends depending on how many are helping to pay for the wedding.  It is best to ask them their preference.

 

If there is more than one person in the household that you are addressing the wedding invitations to you might need to send more than one invitation.  If the people are a couple, you can address the envelope with both their names alphabetically.  If the people in the home are roommates, you should address a separate invitation for each person.  Children over the age of 18 years should be sent a separate invitation even if you sent one to the couple or roommates of the home.  If however, the children are under the age of 18, they’re invite is considered part of the parents’ invite.

 

Always hand address the wedding invitations.  You should write neatly on the front the names and address of the guests.  On the back flap of the invitation, you should put your return address.  Don’t use sticky labels or rubber stamps for this.  Your return address should also be written by hand.

Trying to Trim the Guest List

During the first stages of planning our wedding, all those involved sat down and created a massive guest list. We came up with every person that might possibly be invited. Needless to say, this list was hundreds and hundreds of people long.

And then came the cuts.

Cutting people off a guest list is an agonizing process. Ideally we’d like to invite everyone, but of course we don’t have the money for that, so here’s how we started trimming:

1. We cut kids.
We wanted to be inclusive initially, but we’re also the last of our set of friends to marry and start a family, so a huge portion of our initial list consisted of toddlers. (A handful of kids will still be coming, but that’s it.)

2. We cut the “reciprocal wedding invitation” folks.
By this I mean we took off those we felt we had to send an invite to only because they had invited us to their wedding. We just don’t have the funding to be polite like that.

3. We cut co-workers.
We have too many family members and friends to accommodate as it is, so nearly all co-workers have to be sacrificed, unfortunately.

…And now we’re down to the tough choices. Which friends mean the most to us? Which do we want to be there, and which do we need to be there?

One of the criteria I’m using to decide is the Engagement Question. No, not the “will you marry me” bit — the “when did you tell this person you were engaged?” one. Did you tell them that day, the next day, the next week… or did you just figure they’d hear about your engagement through the grapevine? The answers to this question are really helpful when it comes to “ranking” one’s friends (as awful as that sounds).

If that doesn’t get us down to the number we’re aiming for, our last resort will be to eliminate some of the “guest” spots we’ve been reserving for single friends. Again, not the most polite thing to do, but I think most of our single friends would understand if we explained the situation to them. (Besides, they’ll all probably come as a big group anyway.)

I think we’ve still got about 20 more people to cut, so wish us luck…

My Bridal Show Experience (And Some Advice!)

I’m just starting to plan my wedding, and yesterday I attended my first two bridal shows.

The best part of each was definitely the free food. I sampled tuna, pork, scallops, potatoes, egg rolls, sushi, assorted finger foods, and 6 different types of cake. (Never go to one of these things on a full stomach!) And then there was the wine — I had a glass of so-so pinot grigio and fantastic pinot noir. Yum.

Besides the good food, though, there was the real reason for going: to learn about my local vendors and decide which (if any) would be a good fit to the party I’m trying to plan. I talked to photographers, videographers, florists, cake people, chefs, DJs, officiants, stationers, and even a chauffeur. From each of these people I received at least one (more like 3 or 4) pieces of written information, so that by the end of the day I had a bag brimming with booklets and brochures.

Overall it was a really fun, helpful experience. I do have some ideas about how I might do it differently next time, though, so I thought I’d share them here:

• Set up a separate e-mail account to give to wedding vendors and wedding websites. I gave my main email address to 50 people over the course of the day, and now I’ll probably be inundated with messages I don’t really need. In hindsight, I wish I had used an alternate address — both to keep all wedding stuff in one place, and to keep it from taking over my main account.
• Go with specific questions in mind. And have a pen. Ask your questions, and if you like the answers you hear, jot that down on the literature they give you to remind you later on. For instance, I’m considering a double wedding with my soon-to-be sister-in-law, so we went around asking various officiants how they would handle such a thing. Some people came up with great responses; others did not.
• Don’t eat too much! I know it’s hard not to try a little of everything, but remember that a lot of the food is rich, filling, and exotic — the type of stuff most people aren’t used to eating and that may or may not mix well in the stomach. Add to that the noise, the heat of a crowded room, the strong odor of other foods and flowers, and you have the perfect recipe for nausea.

If you’re planning a wedding and you hear about a bridal show in your area, I encourage you to attend. Even if you don’t find any vendors you like, there are a lot of fun things to see and cool people to talk to — and, best of all, many delicious foods to sample (in moderation, of course). Have fun!

Inviting Co-workers At Your Wedding… Or Not

If, like me, you’re working in a tiny office where everyone tends to know everyone, this may be something of a problem you’ll be faced with when it’s time to decide on who to invite.

So, one thing I’d like to state right from the start is that: there is nothing wrong with not inviting work colleagues at your wedding. No matter how much some like to say “we’re a tiny family”, or other similar guilt-trip inducing sentences. As a rule of thumb, if you do not socialize with your co-workers outside of the office, there is also no reason why, out of the blue, they should be on your guests list. Any kind of bruised susceptibilities after that will be just that, and not you committing and awful etiquette mistake. (Personally, I tend to keep work and private life clearly separated–not because I don’t like my colleagues, but simply because it is the way I am, the way my personality is set. I am quite confident that lots of people do that as well.)

Maybe your office will throw a bridal shower for you, though, or offer gifts all the same. What about that? Well, again, there is still nothing wrong with not inviting them in turn, especially if the shower is something completely independent from your own will (of course, if you demand they organize one for you, then the matter is different, but demanding is in bad taste anyway, isn’t it?).

The only really tricky part, in my opinion and from experience witnessed at friends’ weddings, is if you invite a couple of people from your office because you are close to them, and don’t want to invite the others. Diplomacy is key here, but one thing you can always say, and that will always provide a clean escape, is that you are on a tight budget, have to be very careful of the head count, and that you unfortunately had to choose. Still, this might hurt feelings; however, you really cannot invite the whole world, can you? People should and normally do understand that, and if some don’t, then the problem lies with them, not with you. It is your day: stay diplomatic, but firm, and promise to share the pictures as soon as possible to show that you appreciate all the well-wishes and are not keeping anyone out of your thoughts.

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