Wedding Invitations: Major Mistakes

Wed­ding invi­ta­tions are your first chance to impress your guests and let them feel the atmos­phere of your upcom­ing hol­i­day. But in the pur­suit of beau­ty, it is impor­tant not to for­get about their main mis­sion: to con­vey impor­tant infor­ma­tion to guests. In this arti­cle Chan­fash­ion col­lect­ed the main mis­takes when cre­at­ing wed­ding invi­ta­tions and tips on how to avoid them.

Misprints

Even the most beau­ti­ful idea with ornate cal­lig­ra­phy can be spoiled by banal mis­takes or typos. To avoid such an over­sight, care­ful­ly reread the text of the invi­ta­tions before send­ing them to a print­er or an invi­ta­tion mak­er. To be sure, run the text through a lit­er­a­cy check ser­vice — this will save you from miss­ing typos due to a blurred eye.

In addi­tion, it is very impor­tant to avoid fac­tu­al errors. With spe­cial care, check the time, address­es and, of course, the names of the recip­i­ents 🙂

Too much information

Don’t use invi­ta­tions as a detailed guide to your wed­ding day. The more infor­ma­tion on your wed­ding invi­ta­tion, the high­er the chance that the most impor­tant thing will be lost and for­got­ten by the guests.

If you still want to put a detailed sched­ule and oth­er details that you con­sid­er very impor­tant into the enve­lope, then divide the clues into sev­er­al dif­fer­ent sheets. The first is the invi­ta­tion itself with the date, address, time of gath­er­ing and warm words to the guests. The sec­ond sheet is a detailed tim­ing with the begin­ning of the gath­er­ing, the cer­e­mo­ny, the gala din­ner, the cut­ting of the cake and the finale of the wed­ding. Addi­tion­al­ly, you can put a card with the col­ors of the dress code in the enve­lope and a sheet for a response let­ter, where guests will indi­cate whether they can attend, what their food and drink pref­er­ences are (if nec­es­sary for com­pil­ing the menu) and whether +1 will be with them.

Insufficient information in the invitation

The oth­er extreme, which will be a mis­take, is the lack of nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion on wed­ding invi­ta­tions. Before approv­ing the design, check that all impor­tant points are on the invi­ta­tion lay­out:

• Date
• Restau­rant address
• Meet­ing time for guests
• Spe­cial requests. For exam­ple, dress code, gift wish­es (if you want to ask guests to replace gifts with mon­ey).

Unreadable design

In pur­suit of beau­ti­ful invi­ta­tions, we must not for­get about the con­ve­nience of the recip­i­ents — that is, your guests. Both cal­lig­ra­phy and print­ed fonts should be read­able so that guests don’t have to peer and won­der for a long time what this insane­ly beau­ti­ful, but com­plete­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble text means 🙂

Read­abil­i­ty is also affect­ed by the con­trast of the text col­or com­pared to the back­ground col­or. As you know, white on light beige, crim­son on yel­low or black on emer­ald will be dif­fi­cult to read. A small life hack: if you have cho­sen invi­ta­tions on trans­par­ent acrylic with light text, then the enve­lope itself should be dark — so guests can eas­i­ly read the inscrip­tions by sim­ply attach­ing the plate to the enve­lope.

Too late to send invitations

It is best to send invi­ta­tions to guests 2–3 months before the wed­ding. We under­stand that in the hus­tle and bus­tle of prepa­ra­tion, this can com­plete­ly slip out of your head, but it is very impor­tant to noti­fy every­one in advance. If you are late, then there is a high prob­a­bil­i­ty that many will have to urgent­ly change their plans and sched­ules for the sake of your hol­i­day, and this is not very good in rela­tion to guests. You don’t want some­one close to you to refuse because of pre-pur­chased vouch­ers or a planned busi­ness trip?

To avoid an unpleas­ant sit­u­a­tion, send your wed­ding invi­ta­tions on time.

Lots of flowers and decor

There are so many dif­fer­ent design ideas on Pin­ter­est, how do you choose just a cou­ple? I want water­col­or, and cal­lig­ra­phy on trans­par­ent acrylic, and geo­met­ric pat­terns, and trendy min­i­mal­ism. And stick a sprig of dried flow­ers on the enve­lope 🙂

To keep your wed­ding invi­ta­tions from look­ing like a cat­a­log of trends in decor and dec­o­ra­tion, strike a clear bal­ance. It is very impor­tant not to over­do it, because the very essence is lost behind the enu­mer­a­tion of dec­o­ra­tions — impor­tant infor­ma­tion that guests should receive. In addi­tion, an explic­it enu­mer­a­tion will not look beau­ti­ful, and all ele­ments will sim­ply mix with each oth­er.

They don’t look like invitations.

In pur­suit of cre­ativ­i­ty, you can run too far 🙂 In order not to dri­ve guests into a dead end, make invi­ta­tions such that they do not need addi­tion­al instruc­tions for decod­ing. Even the most slow-wit­ted of those invit­ed should eas­i­ly find the date, address and start time of the hol­i­day, oth­er­wise there is lit­tle sense in such cre­ativ­i­ty.

Unusu­al ideas are great, but it’s impor­tant not to over­do it and remem­ber the orig­i­nal goal — to invite loved ones to cel­e­brate your big day togeth­er.

Don’t control guest responses

Often, an addi­tion­al card is includ­ed in the enve­lope with the wed­ding invi­ta­tion for a return reply. So the guest must con­firm that he will attend the wed­ding, and indi­cate addi­tion­al details — whether he needs +1, for exam­ple. If you don’t want the has­sle with mail, you can leave a card with a request to answer you about your deci­sion in instant mes­sen­gers or by phone 🙂 It is also impor­tant to write how soon you expect an answer. It is bet­ter to spec­i­fy a clear date, oth­er­wise guests may for­get to send con­fir­ma­tion.

If some­one does not answer for a long time, then you should call and find out the rea­son — per­haps the guests sim­ply for­got to answer or their mes­sage was lost. This task can be entrust­ed to the brides­maids or the orga­niz­er.

Incorrect number of invitations and envelopes

Remem­ber that the num­ber of wed­ding invi­ta­tions may not equal the num­ber of guests. Most often, some cat­e­gories of guests receive one invi­ta­tion for sev­er­al peo­ple at once — for exam­ple, cou­ples or spous­es. In order not to be mis­tak­en and to make the cal­cu­la­tions cor­rect­ly, take the com­plete list of guests and group the guests by cou­ples or fam­i­lies. If you are going to print wed­ding invi­ta­tions in a print­ing house and sign by hand, then add about 20% more spare invi­ta­tions to the result­ing num­ber: it is quite pos­si­ble that you acci­den­tal­ly spoil a few cards when sign­ing, and some may come with a mar­riage — you and replace with spares. The same applies to envelopes for wed­ding invi­ta­tions, it is also bet­ter to order them with a mar­gin, since it is expen­sive to reprint some­thing at a print­ing house.

Invitations do not match the style of the wedding

If the the­ater begins with a hang­er, then for guests a wed­ding starts with invi­ta­tions. This is your chance, thanks to one enve­lope, to immerse the guests in the atmos­phere of your hol­i­day and give them the first idea of ​​what awaits them. Admit it: an ele­gant invi­ta­tion in a vel­vet enve­lope with a gold tas­sel and cal­lig­ra­phy is not what you expect from a bright crim­son card with a geo­met­ric pat­tern and a car­toon-style new­ly­weds.

So that guests do not have dis­so­nance, try to main­tain the cho­sen style and col­or scheme in wed­ding invi­ta­tions.