Invitation wording... who'd have thought it'd be such a nightmare?!

I am currently playing around with bits of paper and card trying to create mock-ups of my invitation, when it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t thought about what the invitations were actually going to say!

Traditionally, weddings were ‘hosted’ and paid for by the Bride’s family. However in current times, the parental family set up can take many different forms; divorces, widowings, single-parent families. Not to mention that the way weddings are paid for can take different forms!

So when I realised I was one of those awkward people who has to confuse  things by not taking the ‘traditional’ route of hosting a wedding, I knew it was going to be a struggle to find something that fitted OUR situation perfectly.

My parents are divorced, Mr M’s aren’t. This means that if I took ‘invitation etiquette seriously, I’d have to list my parents names individually and Mr M’s together – which frankly looks a bit silly to me. To add to the confusion further, Mr M and I are funding the majority of the wedding ourselves. Our kind parents have donated bits and pieces here and there, but most of what we can have on the day is down to how much we as a couple save. So technically, WE are hosting the wedding, which means the parent’s shouldn’t be mentioned at all. But the parents ARE contributing small amounts of cash, so surely it’d only be polite to mention them…

You can see where this is going!!

So, we have decided on the following wording for our invitations. Hopefully it covers all the dodgy bits nicely, and still follows some kind of etiquette!!

“Together with their parents,

NAME

and

NAME

request the pleasure of your company

as they exchange vows and celebrate their marriage.

DATE

TIME

VENUE”

If you are still stuck, or you want something a bit less conventional then type ‘wedding invitation wording’ into Google and it’ll show you loads of good websites that have all the different kind of wordings to suit your situation.

I found Special Day Invitations to be particularly good as they have downloadable PDFs with different options for day and evening guests, thank you cards and reply cards. Click on the link to be taken straight there! http://www.specialdayinvitations.co.uk/index.php?main_page=page&id=9

The Offbeat Bride website was also good for less conventional types of wording – though I think you have to be either a space geek or hippy to be able to use them to their full extent without guests raising their eyebrows!!!