With themed and destination weddings so popular it is difficult to figure out how to apply the rules of wedding invitation wording etiquette.
Let’s go through the basics of traditional etiquette. There isn’t a lot of room for a creative example here.
The first thing is to know who is hosting (paying) the wedding. Generally this is the bride’s parents, although if the groom’s parents offer to host or co-host then their names should be listed also. The invitations might read like this:
Mr. and Mrs. James Kelley
request the honor of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter
Meghan Ann
to
Thomas David Kingston
venue
time, day, date
street
city, state
Some other "rules" are:
Punctuation is only used after courtesy titles like Dr., Mrs., Rev.
Numbers in a date are spelled out and go after the day:
Saturday the first of October
(the year need not be mentioned however if you use it spell it out)
The invitation must be written in the third person:
Mr. and Mrs. William Smith
If your wedding is held in a place other than a house of worship, this would be one way to word it acceptably:
Mr. and Mrs. Robert White
request the pleasure of your company
etc.
However families today are so varied with divorce and remarriage, widowed or single parents, that one might believe that the "old rules" no longer apply. This is not really so. If the parents are divorced but are both contributing to the wedding, the parent who raised her is listed first:
Mrs. Joan Harris Davies
and
Mr. Michael Davies
or
Mr. and Mrs. Michael Davies
When the parent is widowed but the bride wants to honor the deceased parent the card would read:
Mr. Patrick Murphy
requests the pleasure of your company
at the marriage of his daughter
Fiona daughter of the late
Kay Murphy
to John Doe
etc.
When both sets of parents are co-hosting the wedding:
Mr. and Mrs. William Brown
and
Mr. and Mrs. Henry Smith
request the pleasure of your company
at the marriage of their children
Karen Brown
and
Charles Smith
If the couple is hosting the wedding themselves but wish to honor their parents:
Mary Ellen Quentin
and
Sean Stephen Williams
together with their parents
etc.
Now that you understand the norms of wedding invitation wording etiquette, why not make your own cheap invitations.
