Wedding Invitations

Think about the project of sending wedding invitations as you would any project at work. First, decide whether your potential invitees require traditional invitations. Parents, grandparents and older relatives will need a formal invitation as a keepsake, but your college friends may only need an email.

If possible, limit the number you have to send. If a significant number of people you plan to invite are Internet savvy, set up a wedding website with all the necessary information then send everyone you expect to invite an email telling them to check it often for new information. This is a very affordable way to keep your guest updated with times, places, maps, menus, area hotels, airlines that fly to your area, gift registry, etc., etc. It also gives you a place to post engagement photos and photos of the wedding events for people who can't make it to the wedding.

People who have other plans that conflict with your wedding date will usually respond quickly with an "I'm sorry." You can then scratch them from the list and send printed invitation to only those who give you a "maybe" or a "yes."

Using a calligrapher: If you can afford a calligrapher, contact the calligrapher just after you have a firm wedding date and determine when she/he can begin and determine how much time she/he may need to meet your "mail out" deadline. Then plan your stationary ordering accordingly.

Ordering invitations: There are all sorts of ways to order wedding invitations these days. You can go down to your local print shop and pour through their catalogs to choose your invitation style. You can browse through online catalogs to choose invitations. And you can buy software or download special "wedding" fonts and print your own invitations (if you have a good quality home printer). "Doing your own" may seem inexpensive, but it may not result in the quality invitation you deserve, and when you consider the cost of ink and special paper, it may not be any cheaper.

When you order your invitations, you can usually save money by ordering all of your wedding stationary at the same time. And you can save time by having your return address preprinted on the rear flap of the envelope. Always order extra envelopes in the event of spills or ink spatters or addressing mistakes.

Make sure the envelopes you order are large enough to accommodate all the included printed matter and the full names and titles of the addressees. In addition to guest invitations, you will want to order extra invitations as mementos to give to parents, grandparents, wedding party, and other important people in your life.

The typical stationary order will include inner and outer envelopes for the invitation and the RSVP card. You may also include cards for guest to choose food at the rehearsal dinner and reception, and you will definitely want to order thank you cards. If the wedding will be several months in the future, you may want to send pre-wedding announcements ahead of the actual invitations to alert guest to keep calendars open.

There's a whole industry devoted to wedding stationary -- you can order "pew assignment" cards, napkins printed with your names and wedding date, food name cards, ceremony programs, reception programs, etc., etc. If you're on a short budget, or on a short fuse, you probably don't need most of these extras. After all, even a dumb guest will figure out the ceremony as they watch from their pew, and the ushers will show guest to their pews. If your guests can't tell what the food is, you won't solve that problem with food cards.

You might however, want a guest book -- so you can check guest invited off against gifts received, and so you'll remember who came to your wedding when you're trying to arrange your anniversary parties! And you might want to include a map, so guest can find their way to the event.

Once you get your invitations, you will want to weigh a fully stuffed invitation envelope to determine how much postage you will need so you can buy stamps. You can check out the many unique stamps online and order a selection of the most romantic ones.

Addressing envelopes: First, computerize your guest list, making sure you have full name with title, street address, state, and zip. Then print out this list with no more than ten names/addresses on a page, each name and address separated by a couple of spaces from the next. Use a size 12 or larger font, so the list can be easily read by your elderly Great Aunt, who you'll invite to your envelope addressing party because she's the only one in the family with decent penmanship.

After you're printed out your list and before you give it to your envelope addressing team, verify addresses and zip codes! You can usually verify addresses with the online "white pages," and you can verify the zip codes at the post office website.

Now, it's time to call in all the favors your friends and relatives owe you and put your project management skills to use. Gather your project team around a very clean kitchen or dining table in comfortable chairs. Before they arrive, gather up new, fine-point pens -- all the same brand, all in the same shade of black ink -- and pre-test them. Separate the outer envelopes from the rest of your stationary order. Move the rest of your order to another room (in a clean, safe place).

Divide up the guest list pages at each place around the table. Distribute about 10 outer envelopes to each person, keeping the remainder of the envelopes and the actual invitations in a safe place while the actual envelope addressing is going on. As the envelopes for each guest list page are completed, gather them up and put them in this safe place, then distribute more envelopes.

If you provide your invitation addressing team something to drink, make it white wine or club soda so that if someone spills their drink, all isn't ruined. White wine serves two purposes. It keeps the potential damage to a minimum and, after a glass of wine, no telling what family secrets your Great Aunt will reveal!

Now, back to envelope addressing. The outer envelope is addressed with title and name(s) and mailing address

The inner envelope contains only the title and last name(s) -- Dr. and Mrs. Johnson. If children are invited (and if children are invited, you may need to factor nursery care for guests' children into your budget plans), their first names are listed below their parents names -- Jennifer and Jason.

Envelope stuffing: Even if you hire a calligrapher, and even if you feed your envelopes through your home computer printer for addressing, you and your still best friends will probably be stuck with envelope stuffing.

Again, form an assembly line and count out a specific number of each of the stuffing items -- say 10 at a time, like you did with envelope addressing. Each person in the assembly line is responsible for doing one thing and one thing only. They do their thing, then hand it on to the next person who does their thing then hands it on to the next person..... Better make them all wash their hands before they begin!

Start stuffing the inner envelope in the following order (printed copy runs in the same direction on all cards):

4. Response Card (tucked under the flap of the Response Card Envelope) and Envelope in back of the Reception Card

These items are placed in the inner envelope with the printed copy on top most invitation facing the envelope back as you slid it in. The inner envelope is then turned so that the front of the inner envelope (with the title and name) is facing you. Slid this into the outer envelope with the guest name side facing the back of the outer envelope.

Stuff 10 envelopes, then before anyone seals anything, take an inventory. If there are any items left over, it's time to take a break. Calm down. Have a glass of wine and thank your lucky stars that you only have 10 envelopes to go through to find the one with the missing item. Fix the problem, seal those 10 envelopes, and put them aside in a clean, safe place, while you do 10 more. Count again. Do ten more. Seal those 10. Put them aside in a clean, safe place with the other sealed envelopes.

If you have several hundred invitations to do, you'll probably want to go to bed and sleep eight hour after you finish the first hundred. What you don't want to do is address them all, stuff them all, seal them all in one sitting, then find you've left something out when you start cleaning up the next morning. There are many approaches to steaming envelopes -- none of them good. Slow and steady wins the race. Take a break. Slow and steady wins the race. Take a break.

If you're wondering if all this inner an outer envelope stuffing is necessary, it isn't. Heck, you could probably just send emails and forget the whole invitation thing. But, like most things to do with weddings, it's "traditional." Which means people have been doing it so long they've forgotten why they're doing it.

The double envelope thing is derived from when invitations were delivered by courier on horseback. Mail tended to arrive soiled. A servant would discard the outer envelope and deliver the clean inner envelope on a tray of the lady of the house, since a true lady would never soil her hands. Of course, given what can happen in a modern postal facility these days, a double envelope is still a good idea.

The inner tissue is a similar holdover. Printers of old used the tissues as separators in order to protect the wet ink from smudging. Printing techniques differ today, so they're unnecessary, but traditional, and a nice touch -- like opening a present.

When it's time to mail the invitations -- six to eight weeks in advance of the wedding -- pick a time of day to visit the post office when clerks don't have long lines -- usually mid afternoon.

If you haven't already weighed your stuffed envelopes for ordering romantic stamps, you should have the postal clerk weigh an invitation or two to make sure you have the right amount of postage. Then ask the clerk to "hand cancel" the invitations. They can use a rubber stamp which will not spread ink across your envelope. (Smile sweetly when you ask, though. You may want to visit several post offices on several different days with only a handful of invitations each time, if you actually expect them to do this. Do it all in the same week though so word doesn't get out about you.)

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WEDDING INVITATIONS

The Ins and Outs of Wedding Invitations