Wedding Invitation Wording

Make sure you get your wedding invitation wording right with the following tips and suggestions...

Dress? Check. Venue? Check. Guest list? Check. It’s almost all in place and you are completing your wedding stationery order form when you realise you have to compose the wording for your wedding invitations and just don’t know where to start.

I hope this little guide to wording will assist!

The first point is to decide who is sending the invitations. I don’t mean who’s putting them in envelopes and licking the stamps, I mean who’s hosting the wedding. Hosting is a nice word for paying. In olden times parents always hosted the wedding and paid for it from their daughter’s dowry...Mr and Mrs X would be leading their daughter from spinsterhood into married life. That incidentally is why the bride is always featured first on the invitation; she’s being given (!). Today many couples have set up home together and the wedding is a way of cementing their relationship. It may be the couple’s decision to have the wedding and if they are paying for the celebrations entirely the norm is for the wedding invitations to be sent from the bride and groom. If the bride and groom AND both sets of parents are paying for the wedding “Together with their parents” is a lovely start to an invitation.

Today it’s very usual for parents to have remarried and for several family members to be listed on the invitation. It’s not as complicated as one would assume: Brides family first, Grooms second - written as the family dynamic dictates. So, if Mary is the bride and Mary’s mother (Jo Green) divorced Mary’s father (Ed Brown) and remarried (Jim Green), the invitation would read: Mr Ed Brown, Mrs Jo Green and Mr Jim Green request the pleasure of your company at the wedding of etc, etc. That’s assuming that Mr Jim Green, Mary’s step-father is making an equal contribution to the wedding. If he isn’t then just pop the parents names on, or even better, use the “Together with their parents”.

So, hosting agreed, what next? Well, there is a relatively straightforward rule to the remaining text: Host, couple, where, when, time & reception. You can obviously shake these around as you see fit, but really the invitation venues should read in the order your guests visit them; church first, reception after. If you are having a civil ceremony in the same venue your wedding breakfast will take place in it’s normal to write “and afterwards in celebration”.

I’ve listed some popular suggestions for you...good luck!

01: Brides parents hosting
Mr & Mrs Browning
request the pleasure of the company of
Jo & Simon
at the marriage of their daughter
Chloe Emma
to
Mr Mark Empire
at All Saints Church, Weybridge, Surrey
on Saturday May 6th 2010 at 2 o’clock
and afterwards in celebration
at Juliennes, Weybridge, Surrey

02: Bride + Groom hosting
Chloe & Mark
request the pleasure of the company of
Jo & Simon
at their marriage
at Juliennes, Weybridge, Surrey
on Saturday May 6th 2010
at 2 o’clock
and afterwards in celebration

03: Divorced parents hosting
Mr Evan Brown & Mrs Helen Brown
request the pleasure of the company of
Jo & Simon
at the marriage of their daughter
Chloe Emma
to
Mr Mark Empire
at All Saints Church, Weybridge, Surrey
on Saturday May 6th 2010 at 2 o’clock
and afterwards in celebration
at Juliennes, Weybridge, Surrey

04: Parents + bride & groom hosting
Together with their parents
Chloe Emma
and
Mr Mark Empire
request the pleasure of your company
on the occasion of their marriage
at Juliennes,
Weybridge, Surrey
on Saturday May 6th 2010
at 2 o’clock
and afterwards for the
reception and evening celebrations

05: Both sets of parents hosting
Mr & Mrs Evan Brown
and
Mr & Mrs John Dickson
are delighted to invite
Jo & Simon
to celebrate the marriage of
Chloe Emma
to
Mr Mark Empire
at Juliennes,
Weybridge, Surrey
on Saturday May 6th 2010 at 2 o’clock
and afterwards in celebration

Article by Wedding Stationery Designer Natalie O’Donovan

Image Courtesy of Wedding Stationery Company Two by Two Weddings

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