Your wedding invitation is a very important aspect of your wedding. The invitation often offers your guests the first peek at what is in store on your big day. More importantly, it provides crucial information, like the date, venue and time. This allows guests to plan their availability and schedule your special day into their calendars. So, it is only necessary that you choose your wedding invitation with due care, and avoid any mistake in it.
Today, we will look at the most common mistakes that couples make when planning their wedding invitation. This will allow you to avoid the same, and do it right. So, here goes.
1. Sending out the wrong information
You need to worry about ensuring all the details are correct. This means confirming your ceremony time in advance. Making sure phone numbers are correct. You may just have one number wrong, but that’ll make all the difference and could mean an expensive reprint of your wedding invitations (or really confused guests).
When you receive your draft wedding invitation, carefully check EVERYTHING. Get a detail-orientated friend to double check them for you too – fresh eyes spot mistakes a lot faster.
2. Placing your order late
Wedding invitations should go out early, so your guests are informed on time and can send their RSVP’s early. You need the RSVP count early, in order to get on with the rest of your wedding arrangements. Since the RSVP’s are necessary to know how many guests will be attending, it is directly linked to finalizing your venue, planning the seating arrangements, quantity of food to be ordered, party favors etc.
If you delay ordering your invitation, you automatically delay the time when it is sent out, and with it all the rest of the wedding plans are also delayed. So, once you decide to get married, let the wedding invitation be on your top list of priorities.
Set aside time to sort out the design, plan the overall look, draft the words to go with it, choose stationery and place your order. After that, it will still be a couple of days before you receive it. So, factor in all these aspects into your planning time line, and make sure you place your order as early as is possible, so there is no delay in the rest of your wedding plans.
3. Not printing extra invites in the first lot
Here is the deal- if you order extra invites in the first go, you don’t have to pay so much for them. However if you have distributed all your invites and after a month you realize you need to now get 20 more invites printed- THAT will cost you heavily as the printer will charge you an exorbitant per card rate, vs. getting those 20 in the first lot itself. The cost can be 4 times the regular cost.
4. Overloading guests with too much information on the invite
Striking the balance between enough information and too much information is a tricky one to navigate. The more information you give your guests, the less likely they are to read it all. On the other hand, if you want to go for minimal information, be aware that some people will be really confused!
If you want to share lots of detail, then set up a wedding website and load it all up there. Keep the essential bits on your wedding invitation and direct guests to visit your website for more information. That’ll ensure people actually read everything they need to read – and will keep those organized, need-to-know-every-detail guests happy.
5. Over-Ordering
Keep in mind that you don’t need an invitation for every person, so take a look at your guest list and figure out how many houses you’ll be sending invites to before you give your stationer any numbers. It can end up cutting your order in half.
6. Adding the registry information in the card
It is a breach of wedding invitation etiquette to include your registry information on the card. It will not only look as though you are fishing for gifts, it is simply not the right place to do it. The intention of the invitation card, like the name suggests, is to invite a guest to your wedding. So, focus on that. Whether you want gifts or not, don’t make any mention of it on your wedding invitation. Some couples add a “No Gifts please” statement to their wedding invitations. Even this can be inappropriate.
Wrap Up!
When a guest is invited to a wedding, they know they are usually expected to get the couple a gift. Nowadays, the common practice is to provide this information on the wedding website, which is a must-have for every wedding. So, they’ll either look for this information there, or else ask someone in the wedding party or find out. You can always include your wedding website URL in your wedding invitation. This should be sufficient for your guests to find your wedding registry, and choose a gift from the list.
