How to write your wedding announcements

Are you getting married at the end of summer or this fall? It’s time to think about writing and sending out your announcements. Prickly mission, and you ask yourself a ton of questions: when to send them, to whom, what to write, and where to order them? Today, we give you all our advice and our best addresses to write your announcements.

The question that remains when you begin to prepare your wedding: when to send your invitations? In general, we prefer to send them 2 or 3 months before the wedding day, 4 months if you are getting married during the summer season or during a long weekend, during which your guests are likely to go on holiday. No need to warn them too early, it’s the best way for them to forget about your invitation in a corner and not remember the exact date of your wedding. On the other hand, if you know that many weddings are planned at the same time as yours, in the summer for example, or that some of your guests come from far away and they have to book air tickets to attend your big day you will probably want to announce the date of your wedding a bit more in advance. In this case, do not hesitate to send save-the-date, which will allow them to block the date while waiting for the announcement giving all the indications for the day J.

Be careful however, do not confuse sending of the invitations and making of the invitations. Know that in general, it takes a month between the passage of the order and receipt of your announcements, so take into account this delay in your forecasts, and do not go too late, at the risk of seeing some of your loved ones away for your big day.

Here again, big question, and several schools. Traditionally, it is your parents (and grandparents if you still have the chance to have them with you) who announce your wedding. This is particularly the case when they are an integral part of the organization of the wedding, if they finance a part for example. In this case, we will take care to write the names and surnames of the two parties at the head of announcement, and their addresses at the bottom of the announcement. If your parents or those of your fiancé are separated, simply put their names on two separate lines. Moreover, if it is customary in your family, integrate the possible titles of your parents. Add to the announcement a second invitation, on which the mothers of the bride and groom invite the guests to dinner.

If you do not want your parents to appear on your invitation, or they do not necessarily want it (they can very well help you to finance this day without wanting to appear on the invitation cards), do not do it and announce your wedding yourself. And if you want to include them in a cool, classic but not too conventional way, you can use the words “with their parents”.

Confer with your parents. If they help you fund your wedding, ask them if they would like to invite particular people. Maybe they want their older friends to attend this event which is, for them too, a special day. Likewise, you may want to invite your co-workers, or recent acquaintances to your wedding, even if by convention. But if you are delighted that these people are sharing this moment with you, you may not have planned to invite so many guests to your wedding.

The solution: invite people who are the least close to you to the ceremony and the cocktail party. Send them only the invitation card (s) mentioning the cocktail, and they will understand by themselves that they will have to leave before dinner.

More and more brides and grooms choose to accompany their invitation to the ceremony of several cartons to invite this or that person to different interludes of the day or weekend: civil marriage, religious/secular ceremony, cocktail, dinner and brunch. For the closest people, accompany the main invitation of all the other small cartons, if necessary, choose to slip only the invitation card to the cocktail with that of the ceremony. In this case, differentiate each carton by their color, or format, to mark a real distinction between all. You can also choose the unique invitation solution, available in several versions, adding the time and place of the dinner and brunch for those concerned. Be careful though to the information overload.

If you want to play the card of simplicity, and you organize a small-group wedding, you can choose to send a unique invitation to everyone, with the mention of the ceremony and cocktail, and invite orally or not your guests coming to enjoy a dinner and brunch the next day. Be careful, however, opt for simplicity at the time of sending the announcements can you play tricks. You may be better off adding secondary invitation cards with your invitation, than calling your guests one by one to invite them to dinner and brunch.

The choice only belongs to you! Try to match your invitation with the theme of your wedding. Day in the country atmosphere? Bet on a flowery stationery, with a chic campaign spirit, by choosing a typeface font, foliage patterns, green hues, natural or pastels, or opt for calligraphy. Minimalist wedding? Leverage a party and stationery with simple, clear-text fonts, playing on texture, weight, and paperwork to add presence and elegance to a clean, simple design. The announcement it is the first element that will suggest the theme and atmosphere of your wedding to your guests, so treat it!

Attention, when sending the announcements, it does not count in number of guests, but in number of homes! For one family, you will certainly not send a carton per person, so beware of your estimate! To know the number of announcements to send, start by dividing the number of guests by two (1 couple + children = 1 invitation) and readjust your accounts according to the number of single people. Always plan a little wider, if you send last minute invitations, or invitations that are unfortunately stained with coffee during the long evenings dedicated to correspondence. In general, be aware that you need to provide 5% additional invitations (for 100 guests, count 55-65 invitations).

Stay simple! Avoid humorous phrases or novels that few people will read. Your names, possibly those of your parents, places, dates and times of your ceremony, cocktail, dinner and brunch, but do not go further. Do not forget to mention RSVP on your announcement, or add a box dedicated to this, that your guests can send you back. The opportunity to ask them about their food allergies, or the number of children who will accompany them. Generally, it is customary for your guests to answer you a month before the day.

To proscribe: the wedding list, which should not be mentioned on your announcement. However, you can indicate the link to a website, which you have created for the occasion, and on which your guests can find all the information related to your wedding, such as access plans, the list of hotels and rooms of host nearby, and your wedding list. The website, a good way to reduce the list of things to say on your invitation card, to register only the essential.

Pay attention to the vocabulary you use. Finally, think when making your announcements, prepare your thank you cards. Even if you wish at the last moment to add one of the photos taken on the day, there will be only that to do, moreover, they will be ready to go to print.