Collect Guest Addresses for Your Wedding

It seems like almost all brides today are crunched for time and looking for time saving options when it comes to wedding prep. Collecting wedding guest addresses is one tedious task that can often be disorganized and lead to trouble if they’re not written down correctly. But it can often be hard to collect wedding guest addresses when you have a million other things going on at the same time.

 

My Invite List is an easy solution to collect wedding guest addresses that anyone can use. Brides will love the convenience and ease of use for gathering wedding guest addresses. Let’s go over some of the etiquette and tips that will help you survive the wedding guest list process.

 

Give Advance Notice

Send out the invites about two months before the wedding. This should give your guests plenty of time to plan for the event, get a babysitter if they have children, get your wedding gift, and figure out transportation if needed. If it is a destination wedding or you have guests coming from far away, you may want to give them advance notice with a Save-the-Date even earlier or just a phone call, email or text if it’s just one or two guests. If you are having guests RSVP for the wedding, the two month invitation lead will give them time to make arrangements and return the RSVP cards.

 

Formality with Names

When addressing the invites and envelopes, let the formality of your wedding dictate a lot of the decisions. For a very formal wedding, pay close attention to addressing envelopes with full names, and titles where appropriate. For a less formal wedding, it may be appropriate to use nicknames, etc. Middle names are not necessary, but do spell them out fully if using them on a more formal invite. Do not abbreviate a first, middle, or last name.

 

Handwritten vs. Printed

Hand write your invite addresses for the classic look. Brides who opt for this traditional, albeit time consuming, style may also like to handwritten RSVP cards, gift tags, or table reservation cards. However if you are short on time or have terrible penmanship, you can either pay a professional calligrapher to do beautiful handwritten invite addresses for you, or you can have your wedding invitation printer print them with a beautiful script font.

 

Avoid Abbreviations with Addresses

Spell out everything including the word apartment, the full street names, the city and states in the addresses on your wedding envelopes for maximum formality.

 

Return Address

The return address is traditionally printed on the back of the envelope, using the same level of formality as you used for the invitees address.

 

Addressing Couples and Families

When addressing a family, you can either print the whole family name such as “The Hughes Family” or individually list the names of the family members. If you are listing out the names, start with the parent(s) and then list out the children, oldest to youngest. For couples, list the wife first, then the husband and last name; “Jennifer and Scott Hanson” for example. If the couple has different last names, list the wife’s full name first and then the husband in this format: “Alyssa Morris and David Snow.”

 

Inner and Outer Envelopes

While not strictly necessary, a more traditional style is to have an outer and inner envelope. The original concept behind the outer envelope was to serve as a protector for the inner envelope and invite, as the outer envelope could often become dirty in transport. Today the mail process does not involve the same processes that used to dirty the outer envelope, but the tradition still remains, especially for maintaining a formal style. The inner envelope and invite within can also provide a keepsake for parents and others who might want to hold onto the invite.

 

If you are opting for the inner envelope, there are some etiquette rules to follow here. The outer envelope address will have a more general address to the family. The inner envelope is where you could specify that just the adults are invited, for example. Since the outer envelope includes the full address and the inner envelope just includes the names, you will have much more room to list out each invitee individually.

 

While collecting the wedding guest list and addressing wedding invite envelopes can be a little daunting, with a little help and planning you can knock it out in no time. Use My Invite List and the help of a good printer like The Invitation Maker.com to get the job done as efficiently as possible.