Use these helpful tips for a simple approach to correctly wording and laying out your wedding invitations & stationery

Formal or informal?

Before you begin, decide on what style you are using in your wedding stationery theme. A more traditional style will use formal wording such as ‘requests the pleasure of..’  while a more light-hearted theme will use informal wording such as ‘Would love you to attend..’

If you have already decided on the graphic design element of your wedding invites, try to match the wording style to the graphic style. A classical design will work best with formal wording but a jaunty design may work better with more informal wording.

The Essential Invitation Details

Whatever details you include in your invites, make sure that all the essential information is included and your guests are fully informed of all the details of your wedding celebration.

Every wedding invitation should include the following:

• The names of the couple
• Time and date of the wedding ceremony and reception
• Name of both the ceremony and reception venues
• RSVP contact details
• RSVP final return date

It may seem obvious, but make sure to clearly state who is invited and whether they are welcome to bring their children or a plus one. For example ‘Peter & Lillian’ or ‘Lillian & Friend’ or even ‘Peter, Lillian & Children’ are all acceptable ways to word your invitation without any ambiguity as to who is welcome to attend.

Layout and design

The order of your wording usually follows a set format. Typically, your wedding invitation will follow a layout such as

• The host or hosts – This opening line refers to the person or persons hosting the event. This may be the happy couple themselves, the bride or groom’s parents, or both sets of parents
• The invitation or request – This is where you extend the invitation, such as ‘requests the pleasure of the company of… ‘ or ‘invite you to attend the marriage of… ‘ etc
• The names of the couple being married
• Time and date of the event
• The name of the venue – You need only add the name and a general location such as the town or county. Specific details can be included in your guest information card.
• Details of the reception – You may reference the venue and location of your reception and typically this line is also preceded by something like ‘followed by a reception afterwards at…’

What not to include

The wedding invitation itself should be considered as just that, an opportunity to extend an invitation to your potential guest while including enough information for your guest to make their decision.

All other information such as venue location, maps, dietary preferences etc. can be added to a separate ‘guest information card’ or ‘event details card’ and is usually included in the envelope along with the invitation

Checking and proof-reading

When you have finalised the wording for your wedding invitations, an essential final task is to proof-read and double check the specific details of the event. Make sure to check the essentials first, time, date, venue address, contact phone numbers etc, then carefully check the spelling and grammar of the entire text. A good tip for final spell checking is to start at the end and read the text backwards. You should also make full use of your computers spellcheck and of course, having a second or even third person proof read your text is always helpful in spotting any spelling or grammatical errors.