Wedding Invites Etiquette

Rebel1977

Just finalising wedding invite template, for the return address is the address always the brides family home ?

And must you include the names of the patents ?

uberwolf

Tradition dictates that as the parents of the bride are hosting the wedding they are inviting people to the wedding of their daughter to some pleb or another.

Reality dictates that just about anything goes. If the POB have no interest in a deluge of post then your own address (remember the same tradition would have the bride still residing at home)
If you've no interest in post then you can offer an email as an alternative.

And if the POB aren't reaching into their pockets and/or aren't stuck on tradition then you needn't reference them at all. Very few people give a flying tbh.

Karen23

Usually the parents names are on the invitation if they are paying for the wedding as they are the ones inviting guests so it would be

Mr & Mrs X
request the pleasure of your company
at the marriage of their daughter Rebel to
Mr. Rebel

If Parents are paying some of the cost it usually goes
Miss Rebel & Mr Rebel
together with their parents
request the pleasure of your company

If you and your partner are paying the full cost then you leave off the parents so it would be
Miss Rebel & Mr Rebel
request the pleasure of your company

If you both live together I would have RSVPs returned there otherwise it would be the brides home.

Karen23

When we got married three years ago we paid for the full wedding so we didnt put parents names on the invitations and I was surprised how many people picked up on it and commented on it.

byhookorbycrook

Recent wedding invites we got had an email and text for respv as well as a snailmail address.

Karen23

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

Recent wedding invites we got had an email and text for respv as well as a snailmail address.

The last three wedding invitations we received had email or text rsvp which is absolutely fine but I do remember the excitement of the postman delivering our rsvps. Sad I know :rolleyes:

headmaster

Parents paying for weddings, that died out years ago, yonks ago. Welcome to the 21st century and stop trying to interpret from an invitation as to who pays for what. If you get an invite, put your blooming hands in your pocket and hand out some cash as a present. I know someone who was invited to a wedding recently with her husband, and 3 adult sons, fabulous wedding, she gave a flippin lamp as a present on behalf of herself, husband and the "boys", the couple felt like sending it back and who would blame them?

Rebel1977

How do you word it when one person has 2 parents and the other person has only one parent i.e. divirced/seperated

Karen23

You could always do
Miss Rebel & Mr Rebel
together with their parents
Mr & Mrs ABC and Mrs XYZ
request the pleasure of your company

or

Mr & Mrs ABC
together with Mrs XYX
request the pleasure of the company of
.......
to join us in celebrating the marriage of
Rebel
&
Rebel

aviendha

these days anything goes and you can't interpret from an invite

we paid for our own wedding, but for tradition purposes (that I liked), we had the invite saying
"mr & mrs brides' parents invite you to wedding of their daughter bride to mr. groom"

there was no fuss/pressure from either set of parents, and funnily enough, the only people who commented on it were some of our friends who assumed it was funded by my parents, but we were quick enough to correct them, for fear poor mr.groom's parents got word of the rumour and started to stress themselves about expected contributions

the rsvp was to us though, makes no sense for RSVPs going to parents unless they are doing the table plans and numbers etc..

kandr10

Karen's suggestion is a good one if you want to include parents from both sides. That's up to yourself, some like the tradition, others don't. It can help for some guests to know you're the daughter or son of whoever though, if it's a parents friend they may not recognise your name very quickly.
For RSVPs, I sent them to my parents because...well I still use their address for a lot of things! (Renting, always afraid things won't make it to the flat). We put down text and email but very very few used those options. It was nice to receive all the cards from people but if I was given the option I'd definitely email.

Muckit

kandr10 wrote: »

It can help for some guests to know you're the daughter or son of whoever though, if it's a parents friend they may not recognise your name very quickly.

Should one be inviting people they don't know to their wedding??:rolleyes:

kandr10

Muckit wrote: »

Should one be inviting people they don't know to their wedding??:rolleyes:

Ideally no, but both of our parents are closer to their friends than their own family...make of that what you will! Anyway they appreciated us being able to invite their friends so we did. Not all of them knew me or my husband, granted most did.

Cathmandooo

Muckit wrote: »

Should one be inviting people they don't know to their wedding??:rolleyes:

It hardly means they don't know them, as kandr10 said it's that they may not immediately recognise the name. Completely understandable. I'll probably have both sets of parents names on the invites purely for this reason. My surname would be quite a common Irish name, I would guess my parents friends would struggle to place me without my parents names. It's best to avoid any confusion.

Muckit

Cathmandooo wrote: »

It hardly means they don't know them, as kandr10 said it's that they may not immediately recognise the name. Completely understandable.

It's best to avoid any confusion.

I wouldn't have any acquaintances that wouldn't be able to recognise my name! I'm sorry but i can't see the logic in inviting someone that neither the bride or the groom know! Sure why not invite every dog on the street?

...Let me get this straight, you are planning to avoid confusion by putting
names other than the bride and groom on the invite? (A total of 6 names!!) Who's wedding is it anyway?

Betty Draper

just working our own invites at the moment.

We are putting our address the invites and not mentioning the parents name at all.

i havent lived at home for about 20 years, so it would seem a bit stupid to put that address on it

Cathmandooo

Muckit wrote: »

I wouldn't have any acquaintances that wouldn't be able to recognise my name! I'm sorry but i can't see the logic in inviting someone that neither the bride or the groom know! Sure why not invite every dog on the street?

...Let me get this straight, you are planning to avoid confusion by putting
names other than the bride and groom on the invite? (A total of 6 names!!) Who's wedding is it anyway?

Where did I say I'm inviting someone I don't know?

The people I'm talking about are people who have known me my whole life. Personally I haven't seen as much of them since I moved out of my parents house but my parents have of course kept in touch with their friends and would love them to be there to celebrate our wedding. Maybe that's not your preference but I have no problem with it.

Perhaps if I just had the bride and grooms name they might all know exactly who it is, then great! But maybe in their retirement age they may struggle to place the name :pac: so the parents names on it helps. Making wedding arrangements for guests less stressful is always the best option imo

kandr10

Muckit wrote: »

I wouldn't have any acquaintances that wouldn't be able to recognise my name! I'm sorry but i can't see the logic in inviting someone that neither the bride or the groom know! Sure why not invite every dog on the street?

...Let me get this straight, you are planning to avoid confusion by putting
names other than the bride and groom on the invite? (A total of 6 names!!) Who's wedding is it anyway?

We didn't actually put our parents' names on the invites as we were paying for the wedding. It wouldn't have been necessary for us anyway since we've all the same surname It has happened to my parents though that they've had to have a think about who the invite was from, that's the only reason I added the comment. To be fair though, just thinking about it, there was also an instance when they received an invite to a male cousin's wedding and it had the partner's parents' name on and they didn't recognise the surname. I guess it can happen both ways.

Just to reiterate though, I do agree that the number of people not known to the b&g should be limited, it's something I was quite concerned about. However although I don't know my in laws' friends, my husband knew most of them and vice versa. So it's not as though they were strangers to us.

Rebel1977

should you include information like ma[/hotles/b&b with the invite ?

Karen23

It's very helpful to put that kind of info on a little card included with the invitations but its totally optional. The name of your hotel will be on the invitation anyway so people can contact them themselves if they need to.

Gatica

My friends had a moposa website where they had all the extra info on the wedding, which didn't then need to go on a printed invite. The invite only said time, location and names.
Naturally if your hotel didn't offer you access to moposa, I'm sure there are other suppliers of wedding websites ...

In terms of who to make out the invite from, it's traditional to have it from the parents of the bride alright, but nowadays it's not uncommon to make it out from the couple. If you come from a home with divorced/remarried or widowed parents and want to keep it traditional, there are books and websites with exact phrasing to use.

e.g. http://www.bellafigura.com/letterpress/etiquette/
or http://weddings.about.com/cs/invitations/a/invitationword.htm

We are inviting only the people we want to have at our wedding. Our parents don't get to have a say in that at all. We are paying for everything ourselves and are going to make out the invitations from ourselves as well. We don't want a load of acquaintances at our wedding and would love to keep it as intimate as possible, though the numbers still seem to have somehow ballooned.