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The Complete Guide to Wedding Invitations

 

"Marriage isn’t the happy ending to love. It is the adventurous beginning of it."

That is why the Wedding Day is undeniably the most memorable and precious day of a person’s life. It is the day you begin the journey of a new phase of your life. But well, it isn’t only about what is to come after. Your big day is a celebration for you and the happiness that awaits! Though it just encompasses a few hours of your life, those few hours are a part of the biggest celebration of your life and you want your wedding to be a memorable occasion for everyone.

These days are amazingly fun! But they also require a lot of work. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot, a lot! If you are planning to have a wedding any time soon, you probably know what I mean. Venue, food, clothes, gifts, guests, hospitality and a thousand other things need your attention before your big day. Though it lasts nothing more than a few hours, you need to begin the preparation minimum 8 – 10 months before.

 

One big aspect of all the wedding preparations are the Wedding Invitations. No, I am not talking about sending it to them all. That is the easier part. The more complicated part is creating your wedding invitation cards. Your invitation cards not only have to tell your guests the date, time and venue of the wedding. They have to be something memorable and personal that makes them feel your love for them and happily encourages them to be a part of your big day. That is why, it is very essential that you carefully pick the style, design, type, content, colour, material, etc. etc. of your invitations. Sounds exhausting? Well it is just the tip of the iceberg. The actual task asks for a whole lot more of effort and time and there are many dos and don'ts that you need to pay attention to. But don’t worry. We are here to simplify it for you. Here is all you need to know to go about your wedding invitations in the most simplified manner.

The Basic Plan
The complete sketch map of your wedding invitations can be drawn by answering some few basic questions.
How many people and who all are to be invited?

  1. What all should be printed on the card?
  2. Do I need an RSVP?
  3. What is the budget available for the invitation cards?
  4. Do I want a conventional informative card or do I want to get something unique?
  5. Do I want my card to be accompanied with some goodies or should the things be kept simple?
  6. Do I want my cards to be guest-customized or should they be generic?
  7. How and by when should the cards reach the guests?

If you have the proper answers to all these questions, all your work is sorted! Let us go in detail with all these individual questions to get some more clarity.

1. How many people and who all are to be invited?
Planning your guest list is a basic thing which gives you an estimate of the number of people you are planning to have. You can have a very personal wedding with no more than 20 people or you can all your friends and extended family! It Is all up to you. But before you begin with the preparations of your invitation cards, you need to have a number. If not the exact one, you at least need a close estimate.

 

2. What should be printed on the card?

The wording of wedding invitation is probably one of the trickiest parts. You need to ensure that all the required details are mentioned. Here is what your invitation card should ideally consist of:

  • A small heartfelt message for the guests at the beginning
  • Name and details of the bride and the groom
  • Names of the invitees
  • Contact information of the invitees
  • Date, Time, Location and Address for all the events
  • Special instructions, if any (e.g. – dress code)

Optionally, you can even add a picture of the bride and the groom, either as a separate part or as a faded background. This gives a rather personal effect to your wedding invitation. While the basic outline remains the same, the way you want to work with your words totally depends upon you. You can write a few lines giving all the required information and leave it at that. Or you can even go a little bit quirky by playing a little bit with your words. In order to do this better, you can use some little notes. Say for example, for mentioning saree as a dress code for women, you can write – Dear pretty girls, let us make the shaadi more colourful with a lot of sarees. You can be witty, sarcastic, funny, or make use of puns, or do anything that you feel your guests would like to read.

Take your time to work on all these aspects. Proofread it thoroughly once done. If required, ask someone else as well to proofread it for you, because hey! No one likes mistakes on wedding invitations.

3. Do I need an RSVP?
While not all invitees consider it important, having an RSVP can be beneficial. You can have an idea of the number of guests you are expecting. Thus, you can plan your wedding better.

Also, these days in the age of smartphones and technology, people don’t find the need or importance of RSVPs. However, weddings are the events where being old school is always pretty.

If you feel that some RSVP information might help you, then add a little RSVP card your wedding invite. Also, without forgetting, mention the return address to which the RSVP is to be sent.

 

4. What is the budget available for the invitation cards?

In the today’s capitalistic market, you can find anything and everything for your wedding invitation. From a simple paper card to metal engraved invitations, you can find it all! But it is up to you to decide what you want for your big day.

One important aspect in making this decision is your budget. Now let us face it! Weddings can be pretty expensive. That is why, you need to manage the finances carefully while justifying the other aspects of your wedding. I mean, you cannot get expensive invitations by cutting the budget of your wedding dress, right? So, plan the budget of your wedding invitations, keeping in mind the expenses of the other parts of the wedding as well.  

After you are clear with the budget and the number of invitations required, you can easily decide the grandeur of your invitations. That is why, always begin by collecting these two numbers when planning the invites for your big day!

5. Do I want a conventional informative card or do I want to get something unique?

As mentioned, today’s capitalist market sells everything. Every single thing. You can have any kind of wedding invitation. Any single kind. It can be as simple or as unique as you can imagine it to be. The market has no limits! That is why, it is you who has to decide. You have to choose whether you need the basic paper invitations or you wish to go for something unique.

 

The Conventional way

The conventional invitations call for a 2 or 3-page invitation card enclosed in an envelope. The card itself contains all the necessary details of the wedding and the invitees while the envelope mentions the details of the invited guests.
Though this may seem simple, here also, you need to put in a few efforts. You need to finalise a few things for you card. These include:

  • The material and quality of the paper to be used.
  • The type of the ink to be used.
  • The design and flow of the card.
  • The number and size of the pages to be used.
  • The font style, size and colour.
  • The RSVP details, if required.

You can use the general wedding invite templates available in the market while filling in your details. Or you can go creative and design a unique card for yourself with all the elements chosen according to your liking.
That is basically an overview of what all you need to decide for the regular paper wedding invitations. However, that is not the limit of what you can do. You can go totally out of your way and create something memorable and unique for the wedding invites.

The Unconventional Way

While the basics remain the same in any case, there are some wedding invitation types that can take it all to the next level. If you feel that the regular paper cards aren’t good enough to suit your wedding’s grandeur, you can make something of your own.
Here are some of the unconventional wedding invitation types that you can choose from.  

  • Mason Jar Wedding Invitations
  • Photo Wedding Invitations
  • Metal Wedding Invitations
  • Chocolate Invitations
  • Wooden Wedding Invitations
  • Acrylic Wedding Invitations
  • Crystal Wedding Invitations

These are just a few of the thousand types of wedding invitations that you can have for your big day. You can also check out these 8 creative ideas for wedding invitations.

6. Do I want my card to be accompanied with some goodies or should the things be kept simple? 

Creating a wedding invitation is an extremely personal task. It is your way of calling out to your loved ones to be a part of your special journey. While the card designers can help you along the way, you need to take part in the efforts to make the cards more personal and heartfelt.

One way of showering your guests with some love is by sending some goodies for them. This is totally optional. You can surely send a simple card to your friends and family. But if you wish to make your invitation a bit more unique and special, sending some goodies is a great idea. Sending in a little something with the cards always leaves your guests with a smile on their face. You can send in anything, regardless of its size, it will make the guests feel a little more special and impactful. Some things that can be sent along are:

  • Chocolates
  • Mithai (Traditional Sweets)
  • A bottle of Wine
  • Dry Fruits
  • Flowers
  • Keepsakes or showpieces

The list is endless. You can send anything and everything that you find suitable for your guests.

7. Do I want my cards to be guest-customized or should they be generic?

Usually, people get all their invitation cards printed the same. Once done, they write the name of the guests on the envelopes or the invitation boxes. While this is a pretty nice and budget-friendly way of getting your cards done, we also have one different way for you.

You can get the invitations to be customized for each guest. This means that while keeping the other details same, the card makers would change the information of the guests for each and every single card. The names and details of the guests would be printed on the boxes or the envelopes.

Going about your wedding invitation cards in this way is a very good idea. It gives you two more advantages over the regular cards:
It takes away some work load from you. If you have a lot of invitation cards to send out, writing the names and addresses of all the guests on the cards manually can be pretty tiresome. Instead, if they are just printed on the cards, you have one huge task checked off your list.

Writing the names is not at all a “bad” way of sending out invites. However, if the names are printed on the envelopes or the boxes, the guests feel a bit more special and cared for.

The name printing isn’t the limit of customizing your invitation cards according to the guests. You can apply similar techniques on the goodies you send to choose out. You can either choose different types of them for all the different people that you are planning to invite. Or you can even get their names printed on the goodies you send like the chocolates or the wine bottle or the dry-fruit box.

 

8. How and by when should the cards reach the guests?

Even after taking care of all the small and big things, your wedding invitations can be ruined if they don’t reach the right place at the right time. It just ruins the whole purpose of them. That is why, taking care of the method of sending and the time chosen are very crucial.

There are a lot of problems you can face in this area. That is why you should decide these things before-hand. Problems like extremely delayed deliveries or deliveries to the wrong address can cause a lot of trouble to you.

Choose a courier service and confirm the dates that the invites will be delivered on. Also, don’t send the invitations too soon or too early. I mean, you can’t expect all your guests to come if they have just gotten the invitation 2 days back or if they have gotten it 6 months prior. Send out the invitations anywhere between 6 – 8 weeks before the big day!
Your wedding invitations can be as simple or as unique as you want them to be. Just remember, the more personal they are, the more smiles they will bring on the faces of your guests! So, pour your heart out and call all your loved ones to celebrate your special day with you.
 



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