Help With Wedding Invitations Etiquette – How To Smudge The Rules A Bit And Still Look Elegant!

You just got engaged and you have told all of your friends and family your good news! So you and your fiancé have discussed your future wedding and set a date. Next, you need to begin shopping for your wedding invitations.

Good manners for sending your wedding invitations would be popping them into the mail as soon as all the basic preparations are in order, however they need to be sent no later than 6-8 weeks prior to your wedding date. Choosing the design of the wedding invitation you desire is as important as choosing the setting of your wedding or picking your gown. If your guests are traveling from distant locations, then you can and should use "save-the-date cards". Save-the-date cards should be sent no later than 4 months prior to your wedding. However if you are planning your wedding for a far-off destination, around a hectic holiday, or during a peak season when flights and hotels will be booked up, they should be sent out 8-12 months prior to your wedding. It will assist your guests by allowing them enough time to make travel and hotel reservations. The preparation of your wedding invitations should be done at least 4 months before your wedding date. This will save your sanity if any problems happen by giving you enough time to make corrections. However you can avoid any printer’s problems by designing your own wedding invitations. You should find out the amount of postage for your wedding invitations after one is put together. You can do this by taking one assembled envelope to the post office and asking how much it will cost to mail it. Your envelope should contain of your wedding invitation, reply card, and the inside and outside envelopes. It is useful to your guests, and to you, to provide the postage for the reply card. Don’t forget to make sure that the RSVP date is at least 2 weeks before the wedding. This gives you time to make a last headcount for your wedding reception. You should begin addressing envelopes 3 months before your wedding. Also if you have many guests to invite, it may take some time. If you set aside a small bit of time each day to finish a set amount of envelopes (say 10 or 20), you will have them done in no time! You will also need a checklist with your guests’ names and addresses so that you can check the wedding invitations regularly to prevent slip-ups. Any computer software that keeps track of addresses or lists should do the trick such as Microsoft Excel or Access. I personally use Parsons Technology Address Book Deluxe 6.0, but I’m not sure where to get copies of this software. Don’t forget to write your guests name on the reply card, so that you will know who has replied and who has not. On the day of your wedding or close to it (within about 2 weeks either before or after the wedding) is when wedding announcements should be sent to those who were not invited to the wedding. You may not have invited them due to various reasons such as budget problems, size of site, or if you wanted small, intimate wedding. If you feel that the recipient may feel upset for not being invited or offended thinking you are expecting a gift from them even though they weren’t invited to the wedding, feel free to include a small, heartfelt note inside the announcement explaining why you weren’t able to invite them such as “We value your friendship, and wish for your blessing on our marriage, however due to (insert reasoning) we weren’t able to invite all the loved ones that we desired to. We hope your happy feelings are with us as we begin our new life together. Gifts are not expected, and we look forward to spending time with you after our honeymoon.” Then include your new address or phone number on it, if your contact details are changing, so your friends, family members, or co-workers have a way to get in touch with you. Remember that good wedding etiquette does not stop with sending out your wedding invitations. After the wedding is over, you will need to send thank you notes which involve more etiquette guidelines. Don’t forget that this is your wedding, and you can bend the etiquette rules to suit your wishes. There are many wedding forums that talk about how to bend etiquette rules thoughtfully without offending your friends and family members.

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