If you don’t do etiquette in your daily life, there’s really no need to suddenly start doing it in your wedding invitations. Unless you’re the Queen. Have you ever “requested the pleasure of the company of” any of your friends before? No! Because they’d look at you all weird. Now isn’t the time to start… there’s a billion better ways to word your wedding invites!

Gracefully asking your guests to join you on your wedding day is the goal. Your invitations should make your guests smile (not yawn; not skim read to the best bits) and have them looking forward to your big day. Beautiful design goes a long way – and throwing in some personal touches makes any wedding invite unique and special.

Hey lovelies!  A very quick little blog post from me today as I’m squirrelling away behind the scenes on a couple of little projects. I’m reaching out to every wedding stationery designer out there for a little help and so I can feature your designs!

Very soon I’ll be publishing English Wedding’s Essential Guide to wedding invitation wordings.

The guide (on the blog) will be full of example wordings, advice and beautiful invitations with recommendations for where to buy wedding invitations!

Whether it was love at first sight when it came to choosing your wedding invitations or you had to search high and low for the perfect design, the decision making isn’t over just yet! Now that you have picked out your favourite design, it is time to tackle your wedding invitation wording. Whether you want to keep your wedding invitations formal and traditional or go fun and original, all wedding invitations should include the same basic information no matter what the style.

wedding stationery by Rosemood on English-Wedding.com (6)

I’m pretty well acquainted with a particular wedding invitation designer and calligrapher whose eyes roll right back into her head at the first breath of “request the pleasure of your company…”. The thing is – it’s not a phrase anyone would ever breathe, or even dream of saying out loud. If you’re having a party, you tell your friends in person: “we’re having dinner & drinks at mine for New Year – would you like to come?” The only place we seem to use the horribly stilted “request the pleasure of your company” is on wedding invitations. And not the fun, exciting ones.

Here’s the thing: you’d never use a ‘standard wording’ for any other letter to your friends and family. If you send letters or notecards to anyone, ever, then 1) you’re awesome! and 2) I bet they’re fun to read.

wedding invitation wording ideas by Calligraphy for Weddings (1)

Hand lettered invitation by Calligraphy for Weddings

When you send your wedding invitations, don’t google ‘wedding invitation wordings’ (or worse – ‘standard invitation wordings’). In this case, Google is unintentionally evil with the results it throws back.

Contrary to what it tells you, etiquette is over.

You don’t need to follow any centuries-old rules to get your wedding invitations right!