Congratulations on your engagement! Here at Heron Paperie, our goal is to provide newly engaged couples with personalized assistance and attention as you select your wedding invitations, guided by our decades-long expertise in stationery, etiquette, and tradition. We know that, despite the excitement and happiness, you may also feel overwhelmed with all the decisions you need to make and the order in which to do everything. To help ease your stress, below are a few of our “Heron Hints” for the new bride or groom when creating your invitation suite:
Before Placing Your Order
Decide on the number of invitation suites you will be ordering, which is a different number than your guest count. You will want to send one invitation per household, one per couple, and one per single guest.
Order a few extra invitations to ensure you’re prepared in the event of extra guests or delivery errors. You may also want to have your photographer capture the suite on your wedding day. And it’s always nice to have a keepsake or two!
If you are addressing your envelopes by hand, or hiring a calligrapher, you will also want to order extra envelopes, in case of errors.
Wondering when you should place your invitation order with us? You’ll want to start selecting your wedding invitations 6 to 9 months before the wedding. Here’s our general guidelines for mailing out wedding invitations:
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Save the dates: mailed out 6 to 8 months before your event.
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Wedding invitations: mailed out 8 weeks prior to your event.
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Rehearsal dinner invitations: mailed out 4 to 6 weeks prior to the event.
Addressing Wedding Invitations
The Outer Envelope
How you address your invitations sets the tone of your wedding. For a very formal and beautiful invitation, you will want to write out a guest’s full name, and avoid middle initials. Abbreviations should not be used for states or addresses; instead, write out “Street,” “Avenue,” etc. Abbreviations are only appropriate for prefixes like “Dr.,” “Ms.” etc. Invitations are always addressed to both members of a married couple. Traditionally, ladies always come first in an invitation, but note that the prefix “Mr.” comes before “Mrs.” You’ll want to take the time to double check the spelling of your guests’ names, and use a spreadsheet or online service to keep track of RSVPs.
For example, to address a married couple on an outer envelope, you might write:
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Henican Babington
1243 Heron Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 12345
-or-
Eugenie and Joseph Babington
1243 Heron Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 12345
For non-married couples, or women who use their maiden name, you might address them as:
Ms. Charlotte Eugenie Gibert McLellan
and Mr. Joseph Henican Babington
1243 Heron Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 12345
-or-
Ms. Eugenie McLellan and Mr. Seph Babington
1243 Heron Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 12345
-or-
Eugenie McLellan and Seph Babington
1243 Heron Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 12345
For formal names with the suffix “Jr.” or “Sr.”, note that the comma is placed before the suffix: i.e. Joseph Henican Babington, Jr. is correct.
For formal names with the use of Roman numerals, there is no comma: i.e. Joseph Henican Babington III is correct.
The Inner Envelope
The inner envelope is where you specify exactly who is invited, listing children’s names below their parents or adding “and Guest” to an individual’s invitation. It’s fine to use more familiar names here. For example, you might address a married couple as:
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Henican Babington
-or-
Eugenie and Seph
Mailing Out Wedding Invitations
First, in order to determine how much postage you will need, bring one invitation suite, fully stuffed to include all inserts and elements, to be weighed at the post office. You can purchase stamps (ideally wedding-themed) accordingly to cover the cost of mailing.
Next, ask the post office employee (very sweetly) if they will “hand-cancel” your invitations. This means they will mark (or “cancel”) the postage stamp with an old-fashioned, round ink stamp. In general, cancelling is done by machine, but hand-cancelling results in a prettier, more romantic envelope. If they are busy, ask if you can do the cancelling for them, right there in the post office.
Please reach out to us at Heron Paperie if you’re ready to order your custom wedding invitation suite, or if you have any questions about the process.
For additional details on addressing or mailing out formal wedding invitations, we suggest these two articles by the Emily Post Institute: https://emilypost.com/advice/addressing-and-sending-wedding-invitations
https://emilypost.com/advice/guide-to-addressing-correspondence