Wedding Etiquette

Before the Wedding

An engagement is certainly good cause for celebration. Here are a few instances in which fine social stationery will serve you well before the wedding.

Assembling the Invitations

Your wedding invitations may arrive already stuffed into their inner envelopes or in separate stacks of invitations, enclosure cards, and inner and outer envelopes. If yours come unassembled, there’s no need to panic. Assembling wedding invitations is really quite simple, albeit time-consuming. For more information on Assembling the Invitations, select a subcategory from the menu to the left.

Addressing the Envelope

Wedding invitations were once delivered by hand. If you were a bride back in those days, your footman delivered your invitations to your guests' homes. Their servant received the invitation and removed it from its mailing envelope (an envelope much too pedestrian for your guests to handle themselves). The servant then presented the invitation to your guests in its pristine inside envelope. Because the invitation was already at its destination, the inside envelope had only the names of your guests written on it. The address was no longer needed. It just had to be directed to the appropriate members of the household.

After the Wedding

Notes and cards that will be useful for your correspondence after the wedding and throughout your married life include thank-you notes, informals, gift acknowledgment cards and calling cards. The stationery that you, or your husband-to-be, selects for wedding thank-you notes can be used afterward for a variety of brief correspondences.

Anniversaries and Reaffirming Vows

While wedding anniversaries are observed every year, major celebrations are usually reserved for the 25th, 40th and 50th anniversaries. Formal invitations to wedding anniversaries should be engraved on letter sheets. You don’t need to use black ink and may, instead, use silver for a 25th anniversary, red for a 40th anniversary, and gold for a 50th anniversary.

Wedding Invitations

The traditional wedding invitation has changed little over the years. Its essential purpose is to invite your guests and to tell them where and when your wedding is being held. Most other information is superfluous. It’s that simplicity, coupled with fine paper and distinctive engraving, that makes formal wedding invitations so elegant. There are a number of basic points of etiquette to follow when wording a traditional wedding invitation. The following section covers the correct wording line by line.