wedding invitations wording

bungaro79

after picking the design of the invites (finally!) but talking to the missus there and we're not sure about the wording. we are getting married abroad and are paying for everything ourselves. my fiancee said that she heard that you only put the bride's parents names on it (mr and mrs whoever wish to invite blah blah blah) if they pay for the reception or give money towards the wedding. i never heard this before and i know the decision ultimately lies with us but we don't want to hurt their feelings either if this is the tradition.
any advice people?!?
cheers

Bookkeeper09

I think that is the tradition but obviously go with whatever you want.
Friends of mine got married a couple of weeks ago and like yourselves were paying for it themselves. They put both sets of parents name on the invites.
X&Y along with their parents, Mr and Mrs X and Mr and Mrs Y wish to invite you to........

aviendha

you can put whatever you want on it, we had our invites saying "john and mary doe invite you to the wedding of their daughter to son-in-law" but they didn't pay for the wedding.. but we just wanted the traditional wording ourselves...
at the end of the day, unfortunately, nobody reading it will pay a blind bit of notice only yourselves

seamus

It's a whatever situation, there's no hard and fast rule. Some parents are more traditional than you may think, so it's good manners if one or both sets of parents are paying for the meal, to ask them if they have any burning preferences.

It can be more hassle too though. If the invite only comes from one set of parents, then the other parents may feel left out. Some parents also insist that the RSVPs are sent to them aswell, which may interfere with how you're sorting that out.

You should be able to judge yourself - if your fianceé's parents are the kind of people who insisted that you ask her father for permission or who insist that you have the priest sitting at the top table, then they will probably be traditional and would like to think that they are the ones throwing the wedding party and therefore sending the invites.

beamgirl

it hasnt entered my head to put my/our parents name on the invitations -we're inviting (and paying for) people not them, i think its old fashioned. It also causes confusion I know my parents got an invite before saying mr & mrs x invite you to wedding of their daughter mary and john and as they only knew the groom (whos surname wasnt mentioned) they hadnt a clue who's wedding it was!

namurt

I can't remember the name of the website where I found it but a quick search in google gives loads of examples of appropriate wording for invitations. We just had our own names on it. We were the ones organising everything so we were the ones inviting people, not our parents, and also at the time neither sets of parents had offered to pay for anything.

hazeler

On our invitations we are going with just our names as we are the ones, paying for, organising and inviting people. We've said this to our parents as they may have expected to be on the invite, over tradition, but they were grand about it. If you like the formality or traditional aspect of the parents thing then go with that but I doubt anyone will notice what you put tbh.

My sister's invitation had "Rachel, James and their Parents invite you to" blah blah blah... and that looks grand too... But it's up to ye, people will only concentrate on the details of where and when anyways, not who specifically invited them!

bungaro79

thanks for the replies everyone! will probably go with just our names but might just have a chat with both sets of parents jsut to let them know instead of seeing it on the invite

Clareman

we had Clareman and Ms. Clareman together with their parents wish to invite ___________ to their wedding. Mrs. Clareman's mother had a bit of a strop but when she was told that if she wanted to pay for the wedding and as a result actually invite the people she was more than welcome to