Wedding invitations need to be very comprehensive. This will be the first and main form of information for your guests. They need to know everything important so they can plan their lives around the event. If you do not add some pertinent information, it can ruin the wedding for some and prevent others from going.
You don’t want your guests to get shocked because they were not completely informed. So, what does a wedding invitation need and look like? Here is a checklist of what wedding invitations should contain and what the appearance should be brought to you by BrideandGroomDirect
Pieces
When producing a personalized wedding invitation, there are a lot of things to include. All wedding invitations should have an outer envelope, an unsealed inner envelope, the invitation, a reception card, and a response card. The response card should have a self-addressed, stamped envelope so it is easy to send back a guest’s response.
The reception card is usually only included if the receiving party is going to be at a different location than the wedding. Another thing that is often included is printed maps and information on the surrounding area. This includes hotels to book and restaurants to eat at. Any information that is important about the area, such as traffic times and when you should arrive at the ceremony, should be included.
Appearance
This can change depending on who is getting married. Traditional wedding invitations are usually heavy stock and 100% cotton or linen paper in white or ecru. The words are engraved using black or charcoal ink, depending on what you like. To prevent smudging, a square of tissue paper is put on top of the engraving. This goes all the way back a few hundred years when engraving became popular. The practice stuck and it is commonly used in invitations.
If you do not want a traditional wedding invitation, then there are many couples who try to make their invites more unique. You can get away from the standard colors and instead create invitations with unusual colors and sizes. Rather than the 100% cotton, try more exotic textures that relate to the color scheme of your wedding. This will make the invites fit in more with what you are going for with your wedding design.
Along with new textures and colors, you can add family crests and graphics to make them stand out. And some couples no longer bother with the unsealed inner envelope. This is because inner envelopes were used to protect the invitation from element damage when invites were delivered by hand or on horseback. Now that they are mailed, the inner envelope has lost its purpose, so some brides don’t include them anymore.
Order
It is a good idea to order the wedding invitations around three to four months before the wedding date. If you wait too long you might not have enough time to send them and get responses. Plus, the sooner you order the invites, you can spend more time looking over them for any mistakes or changes you want to make. And you will need time to address each outer envelope. That has to be done individually, so it can take some time. If you want a calligrapher to write 100 invitations, it could take up to two weeks to do so.
Send
You should try to send save-the-date cards first so your guests are aware that more information is coming. After that, try to send the invitations around six weeks before the ceremony. Eight weeks is even better, while 10 weeks is good for guests who are from another country. It will account for the long-distance mail.