How to Correctly Address Wedding Invitations
Your wedding invitations are such an important part of not only your wedding stationery package, but your wedding day in general. They set the entire mood of your wedding in advance, allowing your guests to get a feel of what’s in store for them on your wedding day.
Imagine having super elegant, traditional wedding invitations and then the guest’s turn up to your superhero themed wedding. You see what I mean?
One of the questions we get asked a lot is how to word your wedding invitations. Again, this links back to your actual wedding day, specifically the style and theme of the day. If you’re having an elegant, traditional wedding, your invitation wording should match this. If you’re having an informal day, perhaps something more rustic themed, your wording can reflect this too. We’ve pieced together some wording ideas for you below based on different family dynamics!
Who is hosting the wedding day?
Nowadays, it’s less common for the Bride’s parents to host the wedding. Traditionally, the Mother and Father of the Bride would pay for the entire wedding. It’s thought that this stems from back in the day where the general practice was for the Bride’s family to pay a dowry to the husband on the wedding day.
Women were considered to be chattel, and the dowry was paid to the husband to take the daughter off their hands so he would now look after her.
…Luckily we’ve come a long way from those days.
If you and your spouse are hosting the wedding yourselves, you may consider using wording that doesn’t include your parents' names. For example:
Jessica Paulsen
And
Thomas Roberts
Request the pleasure of your company at their wedding
If your families have contributed to the wedding, whether financially or by other means, you may wish to ‘give a nod’ to them. For example:
Together with their families
Jessica Anne Paulsen
And
Thomas Harvey Roberts
Request the pleasure of your company at their wedding
If you’re playing it old school, and the Bride’s parents are paying for the wedding, you should typically include this in your wording, for example:
Jonathan and Jennifer Paulsen
Request the pleasure of your company
to celebrate the marriage of their daughter
Jessica Anne
to
Thomas Harvey Roberts
If both sets of parents are financially contributing towards the wedding, then your wording should look something like this:
Jonathan and Jennifer Paulsen
Together with Terance and Tanya Roberts
Request the pleasure of your company at the wedding of their children
Jessica Anne
And
Thomas Harvey
If either set of parents are divorced/remarried, we totally understand that this can cause a little bit of tension, especially if the two sides don’t have any further contact. You can always refer back to our original point of using ‘Together with their families’, meaning you don’t need to add any names. However if you do wish to specifically name your unmarried parents, there are a few points to consider. In divorced parents, your mother’s name should always come before your fathers and they should be shown on separate lines rather than the same line separated by an ‘and’. For example:
Jennifer Paulsen
Jonathan Paulsen
Request the pleasure of your company at the wedding of their daughter
Jessica Anne
to
Thomas Harvey Roberts
We hope this helps on how to word your wedding invitations! In our next blog post, we’ll be discussing how to add the guests' names onto the wedding invitation too. This is really helpful and stops the dreaded unexpected plus ones!