Wedding Etiquette Wedding Invitations

Can you imagine sending out wedding invitations 23 times? A 68 year old woman living in Indiana named Linda Wolfe has had 23 opportunities to send out wedding invitations. She hold the title of history’s most married woman, and says she would gladly do it again. Linda seems like a person who doesn’t give up on the idea of marriage, no matter what life throws her way.

Most of you won’t have to worry about trying to fit 23 surnames onto your wedding invitations, but there is a chance that you have more than one. Many women are planning their second or third wedding, and it is difficult to determine which last names to use on their modern wedding invitations.

Wedding invitation etiquette gives you some easy guidelines on how to handle this delicate situation. For most divorced brides, you would use your first, maiden, and married names on your wedding invitations. If you are going for a more formal wedding invitation style, you would add the title “Mrs.” and not “Ms.” If you have more than one wedding behind you, you use your married name from the last marriage.

However, use common sense with your wedding invitation wording as well. If it would cause discomfort or conflict with your families for you to use your married name, you can decide for yourself if using your maiden name exclusively would be right for you. You may also choose an informal wedding invitation wording style, that does not include your last names.

What other wedding invitation etiquette difficulties have you faced as a modern bride? Share your solutions with other brides in your situation in the comments.

Kimberlee Ferrell is the Wedding Correspondent for Beautiful Wedding Invitations.

One of the most sticky wedding invitation ettiquette situations is when to send the wedding invitations. Too late, and you won’t be able to nail down your final wedding guest list and create the wedding reception seating chart. If you send the wedding invitations out too soon, your guests may lose track of your invitation, and forget to RSVP for your wedding at all.

Here are some wedding invitation ettiquette rules of thumb, to make the most of your wedding invitations.

• For local weddings, you should send out wedding invitations six to eight weeks before your wedding day. Your RSVP date should be set to two to three weeks before your wedding, respectively.
• If you have a lot of out of town wedding guests, or if you are having a destination wedding, consider mailing out your wedding invitations eight to ten weeks before your wedding to give your guests plenty of time to make travel arrangements.
• Alternatively, you can still send out your affordable wedding invitations at six to eight weeks, provided that you send save the date cards well in advance. These can be sent out as soon as you are sure about the date and location of your wedding day.
• A common bit of wedding lore is to send your wedding invitations on a Thursday, so your wedding guests will receive the wedding invitations over the weekend. This is supposed to ensure that they will be more likely to respond, without the hassles of the work week to interfere.

What other wedding invitation ettiquette questions do you have? What deadlines do you plan to use for your wedding?

Kimberlee Ferrell is the Wedding Correspondent for Beautiful Wedding Invitations.

With the increasing frequency of wedding websites and blogs to showcase your wedding plans, comes a new wedding etiquette question. On these websites, the brides-to-be can post links to any wedding registries they have signed up for, well in advance of when they send out their invitations.

This allows friends and well wishers to purchase presents for the happy couple, long before the guest list has been decided. Once the wedding gifts begin to come in, the bride may feel obligated to invite the giver, even if she wasn’t planning on it.

So should you invite more people to your wedding just because they send you gifts? Well, wedding etiquette says that it is entirely unnecessary. Especially in a tight economy, choosing to have an intimate wedding is completely up to you. Adding additional guests can be quite pricey, and there’s no reason to break the bank for people you weren’t going to invite in the first place.

Still, some people may feel slighted if they find out they were left off the guest list. To avoid this awkward conversation, get the word out that you are having a small, intimate wedding. Be sure to add this to your wedding website near the link to your registries, so that gift givers will be well informed when they purchase your wedding gifts.

Also, I would suggest sending out thank you cards in a timely manner. Before the wedding would be ideal, so they know that there gift was received promptly. This way they will be able to rest a little easier, knowing that they have helped you on your way to your new life together.

Have any of you faced this problem before? Let us know how you coped with this potentially sticky situation.

Sure, it might seem as if spring and summertime offer the best selection of blooming flowers for weddings, but you the fact is that you actually have lots of options no matter the season your wedding takes place during.  Fall and winter brides have a lot of floral choices, too.

Fall brides can select many colorful seasonal flowers for their wedding, including vibrant orange tiger lillies, chocolate or peach roses, honeysuckle, cream freesia, orange gerbera and ivory carnations.  Of course, beautiful fall leaves, pinecones, and fabulous fall berries and fruits (apples!) would also make lovely wedding accents.  Meanwhile, winter brides also have a great many choices, such as Chinese lanterns, poinsettias, holly berries, Christmas roses, Grand Prix roses, leatherleaf fern, beargrass in gold, crisp white flowers of any kind, ivory roses, mistletoe, and pine boughs.  Truly, there are so many unique and unusual floral ideas that can be incorporated with ease into your big day.

Many new brides-to-be might be wondering about the etiquette involved in selecting wedding flowers and we’d like to help clear up any confusion that might be out there. Both tradition and wedding etiquette suggests that the groom himself give the bride her bouquet as a gift, as well as the flowers for the bridal couple’s mothers and grandmothers and the groomsmen’s boutonnieres.  Traditionally, the bride takes care of ceremony and reception flowers as well as the bridesmaids’ bouquets.

Just remember, if  you’re a fall or winter bride and are concerned about the selection of seasonal flowers available to you for your wedding, you needn’t worry.  In fact, you might find it challenging to narrow down what flowers to be part of your wedding since there are so many to choose from for the fall and winter seasons.

You’ve surely heard the expression “a day at the beach” (meaning it’s a fun, relaxing, and stress-free event), right?  Well, replace “day” with “wedding” and you’ve got one of the hottest trends in weddings today, the destination wedding.  These days, you’ll find that a destination wedding is more of a common concept and countless island resorts and cruise lines are definitely making it easier for the couple wanting a destination wedding – many such places even have an in-house wedding coordinator to make everything all that much easier on the bride and groom. Some of these couples see it as a way to combine wedding ceremony and honeymoon into one, while others feel that the intimate and relaxing atmosphere of a destination wedding is the ideal part.

There is a little bit of work to be done, however.  One part of destination wedding planning that isn’t necessarily easier for the bride and groom is putting together the guest list. Space for guests is typically very limited but at the same time, it’s all too easy to run the risk of offending friends or family by not sending them an invitation, even if they weren’t going to be able to attend. Although destination wedding etiquette is a fairly new concept, your guests will surely appreciate any efforts, large or small, that you might make towards their comfort and enjoyment.

Another way that getaway weddings can take a little extra work is that when planning a very small wedding (barely any guests at all, even close family) you have a delicate etiquette dance to explain to friends and family who expect to be able to attend.  If you think some folks would be tremendously upset to learn they weren’t invited — even if no one was invited at all — then consider whether those hurt feelings are outweighed by your plans for an intimate wedding with just the bride and groom.  It may seem like it’s just one day, but if you’ll have to hear about how you left them out at the next 50 years’ worth of holiday dinners, you might want to consider this carefully.  Enjoy the beach!

Sure, the bride and groom have a lot to do in planning and preparing for their wedding (perhaps the bride most of all), but there’s two other women who have some very important roles in the blissful day:  the mothers.  Let’s face it, if it weren’t for the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom, would we even be talking about this particular wedding? So let’s honor their contributions and take a closer look at their parts in the wedding, especially as they pertain to wedding etiquette.

To begin with, the Mother Of The Bride’s absolute #1 goal is to make sure that the bride’s wishes are carried out the way that she wants them to be. The mother of the bride is there to help her to make sure that what she wants and what she needs happens.  At the same time, it is very important that the mother of the bride allows for the bride’s tastes, desires and needs to be provided for. This does not mean that they can dictate what happens, but rather should ensure that what does is what the bride wants. As one of the largest role players, the mother of the bride should help to find the perfect dress for the wedding, including undergarments and accessories. Remember, mothers:  it’s not your tastes, but hers that should come through.  Also, the mother of the bride should help to organize guest lists, coordinating with the mother of the groom. If the mother of the groom does not contact her, she should make the first attempt.

And now to the mother of the groom’s role.  To begin with, the importance of providing an accurate and timely guest list can neither be over emphasized, nor the importance of sticking to the guidelines given her as to the number of guests she many invite.  Remember to include zip codes!  t is the bride’s mother who will first select a dress for her daughters wedding. A gown of  complimentary color and similar styling is then chosen by the mother of the groom.  She must wear long if the bride’s mother wears long or short if she wears short.  The color should not match the bridesmaids, nor the brides’ mother, but compliment both.  It is the responsibility of the groom’s parents to host the rehearsal dinner.

The line between responsibility, tradition, and proper wedding etiquette is sometimes blurry and even a little confusing, but one thing is for certain:  using wedding etiquette as a guideline in the planning of a wedding goes a very long way towards ensuring a lovely, memorable, and pleasant day will be had by all in attendance.

Judging by the rapid increase of professional wedding planners offering their services to brides in recent years, it’s not too far off to assume that perhaps there’s a lot of brides out there who aren’t into the planning of their wedding.  That’s fine, nothing wrong with that at all!  But if you are into the idea of planning your own wedding, you might be a little unsure where exactly to begin the whole process.  That’s where we come in, with a little bit of wedding planning advice.

In our opinion, selecting the date, or even just the month or season, of the wedding should probably be first on your To Do list of wedding planning.   You don’t necessarily have to have a firm date and time squared away within 72 hours of that engagement ring going on your finger, that’s definitely not in any wedding etiquette or planning guides, but a general idea of how much time you’ll have to plan this wedding is a handy thing to have, both for you and for your family and other members of your wedding party. Have you always dreamed of a spring wedding? Or perhaps the thought of a Christmas wedding gets your heart racing. These are the kinds of date-setting we’re talking about. From there, you can go on to pick locations for both ceremony and reception, wedding gowns, flowers, and bridesmaid dresses. But without the date, you can’t make very many firm plans.

Much like airline tickets and hotel reservations, remember that many wedding-related items must be ordered months in advance, such as the gowns and the wedding invitations. Factor in that wedding etiquette also advises that it’s best to send invitations out anywhere between one to two months before the wedding, and you’ll quickly see that there’s a lot more planning involved than you might have originally thought.

Are you like me, and are first in line for a piece of wedding cake at the reception?  Delicious, sweet, and almost too pretty to serve, wedding cakes have been a part of weddings for just about as long as brides, grooms, and even wedding etiquette. Did you know, for instance, that many hundreds of years ago, wedding guests each brought a small cake, which were stacked on the table in levels and layers. This wasn’t just potluck dessert: if the bride and groom were able to kiss over the top of the stack it was considered good luck.

Often you’ll find a second cake at a wedding reception these days: the groom’s cake. The groom’s cake can serve many purposes, from dessert at the rehearsal dinner, to an alternative choice to the wedding cake at a reception. It’s customary for the groom’s cake to be displayed next to the bride’s cake, and later cut and put into boxes for guests to take home. Legend says that single women are supposed to sleep with a slice under their pillow the same night they receive it — and if they do, they will dream of their future husband. Boxed slices of groom’s cake can also serve as wedding favors.

While wedding etiquette doesn’t specify who may cut the groom’s cake, you and your groom may decide to honor the groom’s cake as they do the wedding cake, and cut the first piece together.  It’s up to you if you want to be nice when feeding eachother the cake or if you’ll be a little more mischievious and get a little frosting on one anothers’ faces!  But grooms beware…many brides aren’t fans of frosting on their faces.