Weddingbee Blog

This is what Mr. Guinea Pig kept telling me as I stressed about how to address our invitation envelopes.

Yes, I actually spent an entire (snowed in) day going back and forth, begging advice from everyone I could harass on Gchat, worrying and fretting about how to address envelopes. Envelopes that, as Mr. GP pointed out, people are just going to look at for 2 seconds, and then throw away. (Of course, he says that about the invitations too, but I LOVE our invites, so people better be framing those suckers.)

The main dilemma? I did not want to use the traditional ’Mr. and Mrs. John Smith’. I personally don’t like that formal tradition of just using the man’s name and would be a little sad to see an envelope addressed to Mr. GP and me like that. Especially if his full name gets to be on display while I’m relegated to just the one little ’Mrs.’ part? Noooo thank you.

(example of a very formally addressed envelope, source)

On the other end of things, I also didn’t want to go with just first names - that felt a little too informal! I know, I’m making things difficult for myself.

(even though this calligraphy is awesome, source)

So first, I decided to use Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Smith, at which point Mom Guinea Pig gasped in horror and said “I don’t think so!” Something about too many ’ands’. As in, John is not Mr. and Mrs., and neither is Jane Mr. AND Mrs. Oookay, fine. We won’t use that!

Then we decided on Mr. John and Mrs. Jane Smith. But something still didn’t feel right, and I know there is a rule of etiquette that says you shouldn’t split a man’s name - in other words, Mr. John should be followed by Smith, not by ’and’. Then a light bulb went off and I switched things around to this:

(and in the font we’re using!)

Mrs. Jane and Mr. John Smith. Finally! Even Mom and Dad Guinea Pig were satisfied with this solution. Plus I (not-so) secretly like this a lot because the woman’s name comes first. Now I know this is a slightly hypocritical solution because I’m following some silly etiquette rules (don’t split a man’s name) while not following others (always address a married woman as Mrs. John Smith), but it works for us and retains the level of semi-formal we’re going for (especially since we won’t have inner envelopes to put first names on). Sometimes I still feel like it looks weird, but I have sternly told myself to get over it, as the decision has been made.

How did you decide to address your envelopes? Have you spent too much time agonizing over a silly decision?