Wedding invitations and how to make them special
Once you have chosen your wedding day, the ceremony venue, identified the location for the reception and made the guest list, it is now time to think about your wedding invitations.
Those are sent to friends and relatives to announce the event and to invite them to the ceremony and reception.
It is advisable to print more than initially planned, so that you can manage any oversights or new additions.
They should be sent by mail or hand-delivered 3 or 4 months before the wedding so that your guests will have time to organize themselves.
If the guests are coming from abroad, it’s recommended to send the invitation 6 months in advance in order for them to make all the travel and accommodation arrangements.
HOW TO PERSONALIZE WEDDING INVITATIONS
Wedding invitations are an important element of the wedding and they must be chosen carefully, from style to material to form.
Personalization is the key to special wedding invitations and it is essential that they are in line with the whole wedding theme.
The wedding invitation will anticipate to the guest what the style of the reception will be like, a real calling card.
The most traditional choice is a single or double card, ivory, white or another pastel shade. The writing is in italics in gray, black or sepia. Usually, the font used is the one most reminiscent of handwriting.
As for the card material, there are many options including rice paper, cotton paper, recycled paper, etc.
The shape of the card is usually rectangular or square. However, you can also opt for other choices depending on the style and theme chosen.
Graphic customization is the key factor to make your invitation unique: you can choose to create decorations to be engraved on the card to visually enrich the content.
If you want a common thread, the first thing to do is to select a graphic line which will be the same for the invitations, church booklet, menu, place cards and tableau.
A beautiful choice that is especially loved by the newlyweds is the presence of a logo, made by interweaving the initials of the spouses’ names.
The logo can be engraved or printed. It is a graphic detail that can differentiate the invitation and give it that touch of personality that makes it unique and special.
It can also be placed on the envelope that will contain the wedding invitation. That will recall the theme and the style chosen for the card.
The envelope can be closed with a stamp and sealing wax or with a satin ribbon for a more classic choice. Or with a decorated clothespin or logo sticker for a more imaginative and modern solution.
Alternatively, you can send the invitations online, but again it is very important that the theme remains connected to the entire graphic line selected.
HOW TO WRITE THE WEDDING INVITATION
In general, the main structure includes the spouses’ names at the top and their respective addresses below.
At the center, the sentence that communicates the wedding, written in third person, for example: “They announce their wedding” or in first person, “We are happy to announce our wedding day”, etc.
The wedding location, the venue where the reception will be held, the place, the date and the time will be indicated at the bottom of the card.
The header of the envelope should be done carefully, in order to avoid mistakes that could cause embarrassment.
For example, for a single person only the guest’s name should be written, while if it is a couple that lives together it is better to write both names and surnames.
For couples not living together, it’s necessary to send two separate envelopes with the respective names, while for a family unit, the correct header is: ‘Family xxx’.
And what about you? Have you already started preparing yours?
