Choosing and Addressing Wedding Invitations
Getting married is an amazing experience! It is such a special day for the happy couple and the relatives and friends invited to share it. No wonder then that to get it right takes an awful lot of planning. Whilst, undoubtedly, some people can afford a professional Wedding Planner to completely take charge and manage the day to day hassles involved, most of us choose to do it ourselves either through lack of available finance or the preference to get the best deal we can and still have money to put to the honeymoon or furnishing our future home.
Nevertheless, there are some parts of the process which are definitely much more fun than others. One of my favorites when planning my daughter's wedding was choosing the wedding invitations.
There is so much choice available nowadays. When I got married - thirty five years ago - you went to the stationers shop, got a huge album to take away with you and you made your choice from there. These days you can either do it that way or do a search on the internet for hand made cards or bespoke cards. With modern technology it is possible to use actual photographs of the couple and get them printed onto invitation cards.
Obviously, hand made cards by an individual designer will take longer to make so this must be borne in mind when planning timescales. Also, it is best to allow for some mistakes or changes in the invitees list, ie if someone replies immediately saying they can't attend for whatever reason, you may wish to invite someone else in their place. So with this in mind you should order a few extra just in case.
When the cards arrive it is time for addressing them and this is best done in a systematic way to avoid leaving anyone out. I did a belt and braces job with mine in that I divided the groups into Wedding Party (Brothers/sisters/bridesmaids/ushers etc.,) Family (Grand-parents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins) and then Friends. It may seem obvious - but it's a mistake I made - to include partners of the Wedding Party ie girlfriend of Usher, boyfriend of Bridesmaid etc., If you don't actually know these people it is easy to leave them off by mistake.
When I had compiled my list under the various headings, I then drew up a rough table plan. This was obviously not the final seating plan but it gave me an idea of the numbers and groups of people who might be sitting together. I then compared the two lists - and again I'd missed someone off - so it is worth thinking about.
Once the invitations were in the envelope and addressed, I then made a list so that I could tick off the replies as they came in - and this could be used to chase any non-replies. If you are carrying out this task on behalf of your daugher/son/friend make sure that they give you full details (full names and addresses) of the invitees and if possible a contact telephone number before you even start as it can be very annoying when you begin the task and find some of the addresses have no house numbers etc.,and so are left sitting on the side awaiting these details, long after the others have been posted.
One last thing - to make it less of a chore, split the amount of invitations you have to write over a number of days and do an amount each day. This way you will enjoy the task and be less likely to have 'writers cramp' which may result in some of the invitations being written in scrawled hand-writing.
About the Author
This article is compiled by a keen writer with experience on many subjects including Retailing.
To read more wedding articles visit http://www.weddingwaistcoat.co.uk
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