Wedding Invitation Etiquette Should Shine
Fellow wedding planners should know the rules of wedding invitation etiquette.
We are not mentioning style – but the correct way to write the words to invite a person to your client’s wedding. Whether you sell invitations or not, your wedding clients look to us as the source of knowledge on all things wedding.
Invitation etiquette is covered very well in the lesson in the Professional Wedding Planner Program available from the Association of Bridal Consultants. The specifics are found in the fourth lesson, “Wedding Etiquette”.
The following are a few pointers and rules to help you:
- Do not use nick names. Use Thomas not Tom or Robert not Bob
- Spell out all things that might be common abbreviations. For instance, Illinois, Street, Doctor
- When a wedding is in a house of worship, the correct terminology is “honour of your presence” and when in some other place the wording is “pleasure of your company”.
- It is common to use the year in which the wedding will take place: Two thousand nineteen
- City and state should be spelled out
- Zip codes are never used in the text of the wedding invitation or accessory cards; only on the return address for the flap and the address for the reply envelope
- To specify a time that would be the half hour – use half after six o’clock not half past
- If the wedding ceremony are in two different locations, it is necessary to use a separate card for the reception information
- Gift choices and registry are never mentioned to use correct wedding invitation etiquette
It is becoming common to use a card that tells all the details. Invitation etiquette has no real rules on accessory cards other than they follow the style of the invitation itself. The Guest Information cards could specify hotel choices, wedding website, parking information, and anything else a guest may need to know.
Knowing all the nuances makes wedding planners shine at their job.
Gloria Boyden, Master Wedding Planner TM Events by Design, Inc. Carmel, Indiana
ABC Member, Indiana