The invitation begins to set the style and tone of your whole wedding. People will study your invitation, not only searching for the facts ' where, when, how ' but inevitably gleaning clues to the nature of the event. What will they wear? How will they feel there? How will they behave? Will it be a sedate and elegant affair, funky and flamboyant, or laid back and casual? Your invitation conveys all this for you.
Choosing Your Style
You'll want your invitations to reflect the nature of your wedding. At one end, if it's to be a large and more formal affair, you'll want to think of the elegance and beauty of traditional invitations.
At the other end, if you're planning a small, intimate gathering of close friends and relatives, and you enjoy creating your own designs, you may want to make your own invitations. You can make a truly personal invitation from materials you will find in arts and craft stores.
In between these two extremes, there are tons of variations available to personalize traditional invitations to suit the exact message you want to convey to your guests.
No matter what size your wedding will be, you will want to make sure that your invitations reflect the other important design aspects of the event. For instance, although your invitation provides first impressions, you may want to make other design decisions first to help inspire your invitation design.
Finding Inspiration
One of the smart modern bride's favorite strategies is to begin by selecting the bridal bouquet. Having chosen, for example, the stunning "Victorian Lilac" bouquet, you'll be inspired to include some aspect of it on your invitation. It could be an elegantly embossed version of the stunning white tiger lilies or delicately shaped lilac roses cascading among the buds and baby's breath in the bouquet. It could even be a photograph of your bouquet, as many makers of wedding invitations now offer to include a personal photo in the design of your invitation.
Imagine your guests as they catch sight of you walking down the aisle with the exact bouquet that first impressed them on your invitation ' a lovely way to tie in first impressions with the lasting impression provided by a bouquet.
You may wish simply to select among the vibrant or delicate colors in your bouquet for the ink colors used to imprint your invitations. If you are making your own invitations, you might wish to press flowers that match your bouquet right into your invitations, every guest receiving a unique version of your personal creation!
Anatomy of a Wedding Invitation
The rest is simply a matter of deciding on the details.
What will be included aside from the invitation itself? An rsvp card and postage-attached envelope are a must. A small map showing how to get to the wedding has become a snap with the advent of Map Quest. Companies offering wedding gift registries are only too happy to provide unlimited numbers of business cards to make gift giving as easy for your guests as possible.
How will the invitation be worded? Traditionally, that has been based on who is actually hosting the wedding. Is it Mom and Dad? In that case, the invitation starts with: "Mr...and Mrs......request the honor of your presence at the wedding of their daughter......." However, these days, many young couples foot the bill themselves and are more likely to opt for: "Jane... and Mark....request the honor..."
Respect is still frequently given to parents by the inclusion of their names in some other way in the invitation. The exact words are a matter of taste more modern marrying couples as they opt for less traditional presentations, such as "Jane and Mark are getting married and they want you to celebrate with them!"
Speaking of modern considerations, the great debate today rages around whether or not to offer guests the option to RSVP online. The general consensus seems to be go ahead and do it, but keep in mind that invitations go to many different people, some who would still prefer, or even require (think of old uncle Ned!), a more traditional way of responding, so always offer snail mail as a viable alternative.
Unless you are going to spread the message and information about your wedding via the internet, you will certainly need to make some wedding invitation cards. Some couples will try to get the most elegant designs from either invitation designers or print shops while some may opt to print the wedding invitation themselves in order to save money. No matter which way you will choose, you will need to know the following points.
In order to estimate the number of invitation cards to be ordered, you will need to create a guest list. In fact, the list can be divided into four parts. First of all, you should ask your parents who they would like to invite. From this you will get a guest list for your parents. Of course you will also ask your fiance's parents who they are planning to invite to your wedding. This is the first two parts of your guest list.
The third and forth part of the guest list will be directly from you and your fiance. Both of you and your fiance should create a guest list. However, you have to be carefully because there may be guests who are good friends of both of you. As a result, you will need to search for any duplicate guests in the two lists so that you will not make any mistake. Then you will combine the four parts to form your final guest list. And you should order the invitation according the number of guests in this finalized guest list.
Although you may have an exact number of guests to be invited, you will not order 78 sets of invitation cards if you are planning to invite 78 guests. You should order an extra of 15 to 20% in case that you change your mind to invite more guests. It is very important especially when you have limited budget. Ordering 10 pieces will be very difficult (if not impossible) unless you are going to print them yourself or pay a very high unit price.
There is no doubt you will send at least some of the invitations via the post office. You have to make sure that you pay sufficient postage. If you do not pay sufficient postage, there may be stamps of "insufficient postage" over your envelop. This will be really a pity if you have spent hundreds of dollars on your perfect wedding invitation cards and finally you get these unpleasant stamps on them. You should bring at least one set of wedding invitation to the post office to get the exact postage to make sure that nothing will be going wrong about the postage.
You may think that your hand writing is not elegant enough and try to print the addresses on the envelops of the cards. However, you should never do that unless you do not care much about the etiquette. Even if you cannot write elegantly, you should have your addresses on the envelops hand written to show your sincere to your guests.
Both Nathan Sire & Jerry Leung are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Nathan Sire has sinced written about articles on various topics from Wedding Invitation Ideas, Advertising Guide and Information Technology. Nathan Drew Sire founded Le Rhee Bouquets. He handles marketing for the business and has years of experience in building websites. He has built businesses around weddi. Nathan Sire's top article generates over 4400 views. Bookmark Nathan Sire to your Favourites.
Jerry Leung has sinced written about articles on various topics from Lose Weight, Marriage and Writing. Jerry Leung is a wedding invitation designer with great interest in Chinese Style Wedding cards. He Designs a lot of Chinese Wedding Invitation Card. He runs a. Jerry Leung's top article generates over 90500 views. Bookmark Jerry Leung to your Favourites.