Elegant Wedding Invitations Set the Style for the Perfect Wedding
Well, the most traditional puts the wedding invitation in the bride’s parents’ voice, but I would say that just as many brides and grooms today choose to use their own voices. They are just more independent and more involved in their weddings. After all, in the traditional rsvp wording the title of the bride is “daughter of” and the groom is “Master” or “Doctor.” But I have noticed that as independent as we’ve become, we quite often in life’s big moments-like birth and marriage-return to tradition and to what is customary in our background, so many brides do still choose to use the parents’ voice. I think it’s a way– during life’s scary moments–to feel a part of a continuum.
A couple of generations ago, people put a separate enclosure inviting guests to the wedding reception because not everyone invited to the church was invited to the reception. More often now we include it as a footnote, or as a way to include information that we wouldn’t want to put on the invitation to the wedding ceremony, such as an E-mail address for RSVPs, which one couple did recently. My litmus test for what is proper is the reason you choose to do it. I’ve always said that protocol exists to make some people comfortable and others uncomfortable. In this case, the bride and groom were in graduate school, where they virtually lived on their computers, as did many of their friends.
The bride’s mother included an E-mail address to make it easier for all of them. And of the people who responded by E– mail, 97 percent used the formal rsvp wording of “So-and-so accepts with pleasure. . .” Years ago, mothers would be horrified when their daughters suggested rsvp wording, but now most people expect them.
I’ve heard lots of mother-daughter disagreements over that too. The mother says that if it’s on a certain day after a certain time everyone knows that it’s black tie. But we aren’t from a world where everyone we know went to dancing school together. Again, I ask, Why are you doing this? If you want to save even one friend from being embarrassed because he wore the wrong thing, then put it on. That is the right reason.
Yes, divorced parents. Emily [Post] and Amy [Vanderbilt] didn’t provide advice for real life, just advice for the perfect married couple with two children and a dog. The multiplicity of our lives today raises new situations. For divorced parents we usually put each of the bride’s parents’ names on a different line. You can decide which goes first based on who is hosting the party, on the ladies– first rule, or on the Mr. and Mrs. tradition. One young woman felt her stepmother was a psychological parent, so she included her as well. And now even married parents are choosing, instead of Mr. and Mrs. Frank So-and-So, to put Frank and Jean So-and-So, because the mothers want to use their names.
