Formal Invitation Question

Hey Emily!


Have you thought of just using your first names? Or just your names with no titles? I'm gonna add some invite examples for you to see.

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For the invites themselves, our parents helped paid so we're including their names and that's where the issue is coming. We are doing our first and middle names on the invite.

Are you asking how to address them to guests? How formal is your wedding? Titles on the envelope are optional.

View Quoted Comment Sorry, I'm not quite following. You're including their names on the invites themselves or are you asking how to address the invites to guests?

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Yes, and the wedding is going to be black tie optional

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Both. We want to be consistent with the formatting.

View Quoted Comment Mr. John Doe & Mrs. Jane Doe should work fine!
You can also do 2 line format:
Mr. John Doeand Mrs. Jane Doe

It didn't do it in 2 lines line I expected lol. So sorry. Here's a screenshot of an example

I felt the same as you about the traditional addressing of guests on invitations - too misogynistic! I wanted the woman's first name to also be listed. She's a person too and is not property of the husband. During the meeting with our stationer, we brought this up and they said the best way to do this would be "Mrs. Jane and Mr. John Doe". You include the woman's name, but also you should "not separate the man from his birth name", hence the order of the wife, husband, then surname. We found this to be a great compromise and this format was used everywhere on our invitations - from the guest addressing on our envelopes to the order each of our parents' names are listed on the invitation. For any couples where the last name was different, we put whoever we were closer to/knew longer first, then the other partner.

We did "Mr. John Doe and Mrs. Jane Doe" for all of our addressing - we (aka I - H didn't care lol) wanted to be consistent and this was the best, albeit wordy, way. We also addressed guests' names in order of who we knew better, so if we were closer to Jane, her name came first.

I recommend "Ms. Jane and Mr. John Doe". Having "and" listed twice in one set of names reads wrong and is slightly confusing. Written and spoken English are different because one sounds better and the other reads more clearly. This is one case where following the rules of grammar makes it easier for your guests to understand at first glance what you are trying to convey.

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Thanks, stationers definitely know best!

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Thanks, makes sense!