Figuring out how to address wedding invitations might be one of the most tedious parts of planning your wedding. It may seem like a simple task but in our day and age, we most likely reach out to people via text, social media, or email…so what to do with all those people whose addresses your don’t have?!
I’d enlist your family as your allies for this task, especially since they are much more likely to keep an address book. Also, Excel or Google Sheets is your friend! Use them to record the addresses of all your wedding guests and have them for you future mailings (thank you cards, holiday cards, future announcements - like a new move or baby!)
A calligrapher can write the addresses out for you, which is super handy and saves you a lot of time but you still have to hunt down all of your guests’ names and mailing addresses, which can take quite a while, especially when people don’t get back to you right away.
Once you’ve tracked down your wedding invitation address list, there are some formalities and rules to follow when you finally go to sit down and either put together a list for your calligrapher or start addressing your envelopes.
Here are my tips on how to address your wedding invitations:
Make sure to address your wedding invitations with proper titles
If someone has invested thousands of dollars and years of their lives into earning a degree that has a formal title it is proper to address them with that title! For people who have earned these sorts of titles, ranging from “Dr.,” “PhD”, “Rev.” etc., it can be hurtful to them and their families when others don’t recognize these titles on formal correspondence like the wedding invitations you are sending.
When you are addressing your wedding invitations, you want to address them so that your guests not only feel invited to the best day of your life but also in a way that shows them you know them well, and that includes knowing their titles.
What if I don’t know the title of someone I am inviting to my wedding?
Feel free to ask them! It is much more polite to ask than to not use their title at all. This rule not only goes for when you are figuring out the title of someone you are inviting to the wedding but also the plus-one of any of your guests!
2. Don’t forget to include the whole family (that is if you are inviting children to be a part of the wedding day!)
If you are inviting an entire family to your wedding, include them on the envelope address by adding “and Family” after the parents’ names. Doing so will let the parents know they are welcome to bring their kids and it’s an easy way to address your wedding invitations to show that!
If you choose to not put “and family” as part of the address, the parents might be confused as to if their children are invited to the wedding or not!
3. If people have been dating for 2+ years, mention them on the wedding invitation envelope by name
With all of the ways we are connected in our technology-filled, social media guru world, it’s pretty easy to know which friends have been with their partners for a long time. When people have been together for a while it is a kind gesture to include them on the invitation address as they will most likely come as your friends plus-one.
This is a great way to show your guests that you really care about them and who they love and have been spending so much of their time with! Again, if you aren’t able to figure that out via social media (there are some mysterious people out there that don’t have accounts and your friend may have not disclosed their name on a recent post!) - you can feel free to reach out and ask their name to show that you care for your friend and their significant other.
4. Are you sure that couple is still dating?
This is a little addition to my previous point about addressing wedding invitations…You might think that your friend is still dating Joe from college but how embarrassing would it be to send an invitation to the 2 of them, only to find out that they broke up a few months earlier?
Make sure to do your research before addressing your wedding invitations to couples that you are unsure what their relationship status is.
Do you have any questions about how to address envelopes for your wedding invitations? Drop me a line or leave a comment below!
Best,
Maddy Kelly
