Addressing invitations isn't easy. Especially if your guest list is anything like mine with the married couples, unmarried couples, singles who are allowed dates, families with children... the list goes on and on. During the last couple of weeks I've found myself searching how to address this and what to do about that, but all I could seem to find were blog posts and websites detailing the same information over and over. I know traditional invitation etiquette, but let's face it-- Today's weddings are not all traditional. Going into it, I thought I knew everything that I would need but sure enough, every so many envelopes I had a question that couldn't be answered by typical etiquette. And I'll be honest, I didn't follow all of the "rules" anyways, but I did look to the traditional rules as guidelines for how I wanted our invitations to look because although I want them to be original and fun, I also wanted them to maintain some sort of formality.
That being said, I wanted to go over some of the main questions I had along the way (the ones that I couldn't really find answers to) and share with you the decisions I ended up making. They are not rules by any means, but hopefully it will help those brides in the same situations as me! If you are looking for all of the standard rules to addressing your wedding invitations, you won't find them in this post, but trust me-- There are plenty of blog posts out there to help you out! Again, keep in mind that our invitations are not formal so I did break some rules.
- My invitation does not include an inner envelope, how do I address an invitation to a single person who is allowed a guest? I thought about this one long and hard. Most of the answers I came across simply suggested including "and guest" on the outer envelope, and although nothing is wrong with that for an informal invite, that just wasn't the route that I wanted to take. I ended up including a little card in the invitations of those who are single and invited to bring a guest. It's a business card- sized insert that simply reads "Please feel free to bring a guest!".
- My invitation does not include an inner envelope, how do I include children? For families with children I simply included the children's names underneath of their parents on the outer envelope. We also have a children's meal option on the RSVP card.
- I really don't want to hand-write my address 85 times on the RSVP card envelopes, do I have other options? I wanted the addresses on my invitations to be hand written. Hands down. But what I later realized was that I was also going to have to address another 85 envelopes to myself and this I wasn't as pressed on. However, I didn't want address labels on them either because that wouldn't match the look I was going for. Enter a self-inking stamp. I ordered a personalized self-inking stamp (for a mere $25) from an Etsy shop that matched the look and feel of my invitations. It looks spectacular and matches wonderfully!
- I also don't want to hand write my return address 85 times on the backs of the invitations. My stamp came in handy again for this one! I used the same stamp that I used to address the RSVP cards and simple placed it on the back flap of the invitations.
- My hand writing is not going to work, but a calligrapher doesn't fit into my budget, what now? Cheat! Okay so maybe it's not really cheating, but what I did is definitely a short-cut. I traced every single address and they look fabulous, if I may say so myself, so it was worth the extra effort!
Here's the cute little stamp I ordered for the RSVP cards and return addresses. So happy I found it!
Wondering what my final result looked like? I'll be doing a more detailed post of my actual invitations sometime next month!
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