Wording Wedding Invitiations

Wording Wedding Invitiations

September 12th, 2011 @ 11:39 am by Miss Kettle
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Momma Kettle and I worked out wedding-invitation wording. It took a whole night of sitting at the dining room table at her house. We bugged Daddy Kettle, Mr. Kettle, and both Mima and Poppa Kettle about spellings for the invitation. But we got it worked out.

I know she and I are both very particular about certain things, but I really didn’t think it would take that long. Naive and foolish I was. I want to go over what we came up with, without revealing our actual wording, of course. And I need your help, hive.

Host Line

Wording Wedding Invitiations : wedding chicago invitations Kettle kettle

Image of host line on invitation via Epiphany Events / Edited by me

People choose all sorts of ways to do this part of the invitation. My parents are paying for the whole wedding, so their names are definitely going on the host line, but Mima and Poppa Kettle are helping out financially and in so many other ways that they’re going on the invite, too. It was a pretty easy decision, as it’s been important to all of us since the engagement was official to be all in it together and really join together as a family.

Reception Card

Reception card image via custompaper.com

Our ceremony and reception are going to be in the same place, requiring no travel. We figure that’s best since our wedding is in Illinois in February. So, we decided not to have a reception card. It would be a waste of money and paper.

RSVP Cards

Image via Photo Card Chef

This RSVP card is lovely, but it’s far too simple for our needs with our wedding. We have to give people a date to RSVP by, otherwise they won’t bother. (Our engagement party showed us me that.) We have to tell them how many seats are reserved for their household so they don’t bring extra guests who won’t have food at the reception.

We have to have lines for them to write out the names of all attending guests since…ahem…we don’t actually know how to spell all the names of invited guests (like some of Mr. Kettle’s cousins’ kids…and some significant others of my cousins). We also have to have them make a food selection so we know what to order. Having an exact food order will make a difference of up to $1,000 in price for reception food, so We.Need.To.Know!

And lastly, I really want some cute and fun wording for the RSVPs or to leave a space for guests to write notes. I’ve seen it in so many bee invitations and I want it! But how do I make that fit on an already overstuffed card? I’ve hand-drawn the basics for you to see what I’m visualizing. I apologize for the crappy Blackberry photo, but I had no other options at the time of this post.

Personal extra-crappy photo. I tried to adjust the photo so you could see it better. You can get the basics, right?

So I need something better than “Accept/Decline,” but I don’t have a lot of room for extra words. I want something clever. This is where you come in, hive. I need suggestions that are fun, but not so cheeky that Momma Kettle and Mr. Kettle veto them immediately. Please help!
Yes, we really do need that many lines. Most of our households have at least four people in them, and several have more. Four was splitting the difference. None of us is going to make hundreds of phone calls to track these people down for name spelling. And we need it so we have it once and for all. Also, we have to have a seating chart, which means place cards, which means we need lines for names.
What should I put on the back? Should I leave room for notes? How about a drawing? How should I word our request that we want people to get creative with their responses? Will it be overkill since we’re requesting something similar for our guestbook at the wedding?

Hive, I know you can help me. You will save me from myself and my desires that don’t have a creative support.

Tags: chicago, invitations |

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13 Responses to “Wording Wedding Invitiations”

Guest

Jamie

Lol, I have the additional OCD that I wanted to know which of those 4 people had which food item (so their place cards color coordinated with their food option and people didn’t have to swap plates around the table). So mine had the blank for the exact spelling of the name, and a check box for the food option next to the blank.

9/12/11 @ 11:56 am (reply)

Member

Ellis2bee (message) 65 posts, Worker bee

I don’t know if this will be any help, but we are getting married at the beach and our RSVP had:
Sea if you can respond by:
October 1, 2011
M______________________
____ You beach ya’ we’ll be there!
Party of ____
____ All tide up…must wave your invitation.

Please choose:
___Pork Tenderloin ___Sushi ___Both

Our wedding is small, ceremony and reception at our beach house with less than 50 people.

9/12/11 @ 12:09 pm (reply)

Guest

notabene

We did:
_ Accepts with delight
_ Declines with regret
_ Expresses feelings through art on reverse

…which has yielded some awesome results thus far.

9/12/11 @ 12:24 pm (reply)

Guest

notabene

We did:
_ Accepts with delight
_ Declines with regret
_ Expresses feelings through art on reverse

…which has yielded some awesome results thus far.

9/12/11 @ 12:25 pm (reply)

Member

gymdive22 (message) 180 posts, Blushing bee

We did “wouldn’t miss it for the world” and “will be toasting from afar.” A little more fun than the usual accept or decline, but still clear.

Oh and just a heads up with the food selection - even if you tell people to initial their choices, many of them won’t… or if there are people in the same household with the same initials, they may not realize to distinguish those somehow (as I experienced! C’mon, people!).

Anyway, you may end up doing some follow-up phone calls if you definitely have to know which person is having which dish (like I did). The idea above of putting a checkbox next to each name is a good one, if there is space for it (there wasn’t on my RSVP card).

9/12/11 @ 1:14 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Sunhat (message) 865 posts, Busy bee

@notabene: Oh I love the art thing on the back! Great idea.

Oh Kettle - I’m struggling with the exact same thing right now. Just yesterday we were working on the invites. I think I have the wording down but I didn’t get too creative because I was afraid it would work against the formality of everything else we are doing. Have you googled “unique RSVP wording?” There is a ton of ideas out there!

9/12/11 @ 2:05 pm (reply)

Member

organicgal (message) 259 posts, Helper bee

@gymdive22: Is definitely right, you will have follow-ups no matter what - I can literally guarantee it.

We also are doing a plated meal so asked people to initial their choices - I’d say maybe 1/2 did. For some couples who didnt initial we just guessed since we figured they’d be sitting next to each other and could swap, others we had to clarify with.

I’d say we had maybe a little more than 1/2 of our RSVP’s by our RSVP date. My advice, make the date bigger and bolder then the rest of the text.

We also used the invisible ink pens to write on the rsvp cards incase someone didnt fill in their name, and good thing we did since a couple forgot. That would be my other suggestion.

As you can see I am a little jaded since I just went through the whole RSVP thing, actually still waiting on 4 more stragglers. I will never RSVP late to anything again - totally annoying.

9/12/11 @ 2:57 pm (reply)

Member

xnlb41084 (message) 43 posts, Newbee

We’re doing:

Kindly respond on or before May 1st

M _________________________
_________________________

__ Wouldn’t miss it!
__ Can’t make it, but congratulations!
__ Will be there if the DJ plays ___________

Please initial each guests meal choice:

__chicken __beef __ vegetarian

9/12/11 @ 3:09 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Ladyfingers (message) 1,119 posts, Bumble bee

@notabene That is awesome!

We went basic on ours, but looks like you have some great ideas here.

9/12/11 @ 3:57 pm (reply)

10.

Member

poelette13 (message) 61 posts, Worker bee

I have a pretty small RSVP card to work with and a lot to fit on it. I’m taking a lead from Miss_Book and taking the time now to track down spellings since I’ll need them later for seating cards.

http://diy.weddingbee.com/topic/my-pocketfold-invitations-1

My top line is “We have reserved X seats in your honor.” Then I have a “happily accepts” column and a “regretfully declines” column with checkboxes beneath, with each guest’s name printed in between the checkboxes. The bottom line is “Please respond by {date}.”

We are offering a buffet, but we need a separate adult and child headcount, so this makes that all the easier to track, too.

I have seen RSVPs for plated dinners include an icon for the menu options next to each name, too, which I think would lighten the feel of your RSVP if you get stuck with the more formal “accepts/declines” language because of space. The idea is similar to this (http://boards.weddingbee.com/topic/please-help-me-proofread-my-invites-before-i-print-them-all), but instead of numbers you use chicken, cow, or fish icons for the selections.

Hope this helps!

9/13/11 @ 11:01 am (reply)

11.

Guest

Lizzy42

We went with
_ Wouldn’t Miss it!
_Can’t make it!

It’s not too serious, but no one will get confused, either!

9/13/11 @ 6:21 pm (reply)

12.

Guest

silvergal

I don’t find it very clear that you want people to put multiple initials in the food section to indicate what type of food each wants. I only realized that by reading someone else’s comment. To me it looked like each card could only choose one type of food item.
I wonder if you could put the food selection part closer to where the names are, so they could correspond, or indicate that you want the number of each type of meal or something? I think it needs to be a bit more intuitive.

9/14/11 @ 3:48 pm (reply)

13.

Bee

Miss Kettle (message) 909 posts, Busy bee

Thanks so much for all the suggestions! I can finally e-mail our invitation designer so she knows what we need.