Wedding Invitation Etiquette

When it comes to wedding invitation etiquette, you may be feeling a bit nervous about making sure you follow through with it correctly. After all, you will be contacting dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people to attend your wedding. Therefore, you want to be sure you follow the proper etiquette in order to prevent offending someone and so you can have the perfect wedding you have always dreamed of. Follow these few rules of wedding invitation etiquette, and you will be sure it goes off without a hitch.

Send the Right Message

When selecting the design for the wedding invitation, you want to choose one that suits the type of wedding celebration you will be having. If you plan to have an informal wedding, you should keep the invitations simple. You might even consider writing them by hand. If your celebration will be formal, you will need to choose invitations that are also formal in nature.

Your wedding invitation should also reflect the colors of your wedding. For example, you might select invitations that match your bridesmaid’s dresses or the linens at your wedding reception.

Getting the Invitations in the Mail

According to wedding invitation etiquette, you should never send your invitations out far in advance. At the same time, you need to give your guests plenty of time to make arrangements to attend. This is particularly true if you have guests that will need to travel in order to attend your wedding. Therefore, you can send your invitations as early as eight weeks ahead of time and as late as one month prior. Six weeks is the ideal length of time you should provide.

The Envelope for Your Invitations

When it comes to wedding invitation etiquette, you should write out the addresses on the invitation envelopes. While it is tempting to run off laser printed address labels, this is considered to be very poor etiquette and should never be done. This is still true if you are inviting hundreds of guests to your wedding.

Of course, handwriting the envelopes for every single wedding invitation can be somewhat overwhelming. Therefore, it is a good idea to enlist in the help of others. According to etiquette, the maid of honor should assist you with this process. She should also assist with placing the invitations in the envelope, sealing them, and placing stamps on them. Try to make this a fun activity as you and a few friends spend an afternoon together addressing invitation envelopes.

Waiting it Out

On each wedding invitation, you should have requested a response by placing an RSVP date card within the invitation. RSVP, which is short for the French phrase Repondez S’il Vous Plait, simple means “please respond.” It is considered proper etiquette for guests to respond two to four weeks prior to the wedding. Therefore, the last thing left for you to do is to sit back and wait to start receiving these cards.

If it is getting close to the wedding date and some people still have not responded to your wedding invitation, the bride or her mother should call the guests in order to determine whether they will be attending or not. Finding out the number of guests who plan to attend will help you determine the amount of food you will need to be catered.

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