What can you do right now that will save you time when it comes to getting your wedding invitations in the mail?
These three tips will help you get on top of things that seem to wait until the last minute when it comes to wedding invitations. How do I know? Because I see it all the time designing wedding invites.
Trust me: Enjoy your engagement. Don’t rush into the wedding planning. But when the planning does start to happen, don’t forget about the little things that will make things like wedding invitations, go so much smoother.
Here are three things you can do now that will save you time down the road when you’re ready to get your wedding invitations in the mail.
Have the Guest List conversation
Wedding invitations aren’t the only place where this is going to come in handy. Actually, this is one of the first things you need to be doing after you set a date and want to start looking at venues (or vise versa).
Just how many people are you inviting? This is the time to sit down with your significant other and possibly parents if they will be involved, and talk about how big of a wedding you want to have. Are you inviting just close family and friends? Or is mom’s second cousin and family going to be invited?
Make the list. Put names in the Google doc. Get serious because this will affect everything about your wedding.
Wanna good start? Download my Guest List template and that’ll help!
Get Addresses for those Guests
It may seem like a long way off, right? I mean, your older brother may move three more times before your wedding. But start NOW getting those addresses for your guests.
Trust me when I say this: I have SO MANY couples who are so excited to design their wedding invites. Like, “can we start today?” kinda excitement. And I understand that.
But it seems like the couples who want to get their invites started early or think they should have gone out yesterday, are the ones I am waiting for when it comes to their guest list.
If you want your invites out timely and don’t want to make address hunting part of an entire weekend, start getting addresses now. Email people. Call people. Text people. BUG THEM.
Talk about Wording your Invitations
Now, this may seem weird at first. Why is this such a big deal to start thinking about? And you may bring it up with your significant other and they’ll look at you and think, who cares?
What this boils down to is if you want parents on your wedding invitations or not. And this may be affected or guided by what your parents think!
Traditionally, the bride’s parents were the only parents on a wedding invitation. They were throwing (paying for) the party of their daughter marrying some guy.
Today, an invitation like that is honestly pretty rare. Most times, both sets of parents are on the invitation because all parents are involved with the wedding (paying or not) and deserve the recognition on the invitation.
If it’s the couple who is hosting (primarily paying for) the wedding, parents names may be left off the invitation. I see this a lot if the couple is a bit older and are putting the wedding together on their own.
One other thing to think about is step-parents. Do you want your step-mom listed on the invitation? Is this a big deal to you? To them? To your family?
Ask these questions to parents and to each other and when it comes to wording that invitation, things will go smoother.