Wedding Invitation: “What to Write” – Wedding Stories
Wedding invitation
The basics of any wedding invitation are the Who, the What, When and Where of the wedding event. Besides the obvious informative and happiness-sharing purpose of an invite, the wedding invitation basically sets the tone of the event and should therefore not be underestimated. Now, don’t break your brain over it either, but definitely put some thought to it.
There are a couple of things you should keep in mind. To start with, a wedding invitation can indicate the level of formality of your wedding and will give away the first feeling of the wedding theme. You could almost consider it a little teaser. Like the way blockbusters release trailers in advance of the actual movie. Even the envelope already sends a certain message. For example, will you use a printed sticker for the address or will it be handwritten? With ink, a ballpoint, feather?
After you’ve picked the wedding invitation and decided on the font and the color of the font and the size (don’t worry, another blog post on this will follow), it’s time to get to work: To fill them in with the right wording (dun dun dunnn).
Now, please don’t worry if you’re not exactly the next Shakespeare, the process really doesn’t need to cause you any grey hair or itchy rash. Of course a wedding invitation could include some subtle poetry that reflects the way you feel about each other, but really, it’s mostly informative.
Please keep in mind that this is an example of the standard traditional way of writing a wedding invitation. More posts will look into other (and more creative) types of invites. Ok, so the first names that the guests will see on the wedding invitation are those of the people who are actually paying for the event (they deserve to shine a bit don’t you think!). Traditionally, this has been the bride’s parents.
Mr. and Mrs. XXX [proper names of those hosting]
request the honor of your presence [request line]
at the marriage of their daughter [list relationship of the bride to the host]
XXX XXX [bride’s first and middle names only]
to XXX XXX [groom’s full name]
Saturday the XXX of XXX [day of the week, day and month of wedding]
at X o’clock in the evening [time of wedding and time of day]
Cathedral Santa Maria del Mar [name of the location of wedding]
Barcelona, Barcelona [city and province where wedding will take place]
Reception to follow [reception line]
Call to action (RSVP / Website)
Little note to self: Don’t forget to let your guests know what to do next after receiving the wedding invitation and add the call to action. AKA tell your guests how and where to RSVP.
Some helpful examples on how to write a wedding invitation : https://www.theknot.com/content/standard-wedding-invitation-wording-examples