Top Wedding Invitation Mistakes to Avoid

There's no denying that even the simplest and smallest of weddings take a huge amount of research, planning, and preparation. As you undoubtedly know, one of the things you need to do is send out formal invitations to your wedding. The invitations can be to your relatives, friends, and even colleagues that you socialize with outside of work. It doesn't matter who you invite, but what matters is knowing some basic ground rules about wedding invitation etiquette. You're likely reading this article because you want to ensure that you don't commit any wedding invitation mistakes or even potentially cause problems for your invited guests. With that in mind, here's a list of the most common wedding invitation mistakes to avoid.

Forgetting Important Details

As you can appreciate, it's crucial that you include all of the essential details in your wedding invitations. You should be including the date, time, venue, and, of course, the names of the people you are inviting to your big day. It can seem like a simple oversight on your part; however, it can cause problems of potentially catastrophic proportions for both you, your future spouse, and your guests. Make sure someone checks that you haven't missed any important details in your invitations.

Using Poor Quality Invitation Cards

Let's face it, your wedding is an occasion for which you won't spare any expense to make your big day memorable for the right reasons. Sadly, some people's weddings don't get off to a great start, and it can be due to something as simple as poor-quality invitation cards. For that reason, you should consider investing in premium foil wedding invitation printing. Doing so will ensure that your invitations won't disintegrate when they reach their intended recipients, and they will also show you've put a lot of thought into your invitation card designs.

Underpaying for Postage

The traditional method of inviting people to a wedding is by mailing them their invitation cards (and handing them to some folks in person). As you can imagine, it makes sense to buy some stamps and affix them to the envelopes for each invitation. Before you do so, one thing you must do is check the weight of an invitation card and envelope combined. When you do that, you'll know how much the postage will cost and won't result in an embarrassing underpaid postage situation.

Ordering Too Many Invitations

You're unlikely to print or make your invitation cards yourself, especially if you're inviting dozens or hundreds of guests to your wedding. It makes sense to have a printing company do the hard work for you. Of course, you'll need to tell them how many you want to print. When you provide your invitation list, make sure you don't order too many invitations. For example, it makes sense to send just one invitation to a couple and their young child instead of three separate ones.

Including Registry Details in the Invitation

It's a well-known fact to most people that you should never, under any circumstances, include registry details in your wedding invitations. Unfortunately, some people aren't aware of such wedding invitation etiquette. The good news is you can put a link to your wedding website inside the invitations, and from your website, people can go and check out your registry details. Also, make sure the link to your registry is clear and easily accessible from your website's main navigation menu.

Forgetting to Check Spelling and Grammar

Not everyone will have an excellent command of written English. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that some people will make certain spelling and grammar mistakes when they write anything down. The thing is, you want your wedding invitations to be perfect in every way—and that includes not having any typos. Get a friend well-versed in the English language to check the spelling and grammar of your wedding invitations before you have them printed.

Stating an Earlier Start Time

Some people have the idea of noting down a start time on their invitation cards earlier than when the event actually starts. They do so because they want to ensure that everyone gets to the wedding venue with plenty of time to spare before the big event commences. The truth is, almost all people automatically know that weddings are events where they should turn up well in advance of the order of service. Therefore, it's pointless to state an earlier start time.

Forgetting the RSVP Instructions

When you send out wedding invitations, you want to know who will accept them and who cannot make your big day. The way to achieve that goal is by providing RSVP instructions to invitees. For example, your instructions should include asking them to respond by a certain date and by a specific medium (usually by mailing their response or sending an email). If you're asking the former, don't forget to include a postage-paid return envelope.

Failing to Clarify Who You're Inviting

You will undoubtedly have a list of people you want to invite to your wedding. But is that list a fully comprehensive one? When you address people in each invitation, you must include the names of partners and children. Otherwise, it might seem like you're purposely not inviting those other people. As you can appreciate, that might result in confusion or even frustration in some extreme cases.

Not Giving Enough Advance Notice

Lastly, but perhaps not least, one of the worst wedding invitation etiquette mistakes you could ever make is not giving your guests enough notice. Everyone needs to arrange their schedules so they can make your big day. For example, some people may need to organize time off work, while others may need to consider babysitters or postpone planned commitments. Always give plenty of advance notice, so everyone has time to make themselves available.

The above is by no means an exhaustive list of wedding invitation mistakes. But, it's a compilation of the most common errors people often make, especially in haste, when they're trying to organize their wedding days.