In Spirit Invitation

Does that mean you’re doing live stream?

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We hadn't fully committed to doing that but it certainly is a plausible path to take. We haven't asked our church yet but we will now.

I would only do that if you were offering a live stream. If not, I would just send a wedding announcement after the fact.

I would send out an invitation to those people only if you're doing a livestream. If not, I would send out a wedding announcement after your wedding to those you couldn't invite

If you sent save the dates to people, it makes sense to send them something, but it should be a little bit more clear than, "we hope you'll join us in spirit."
If you can do a live stream, you can say something like:

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we aren't able to invite everyone we want to include to be with us in person on our wedding day. We would really love to have you there with us, so we hope you'll be able to join us on virtually. We will be married on October 24, 2020 at [time].[Insert Zoom URL]
If you sent save the dates, but you're not doing a live stream, you might say something like:
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we aren't able to invite everyone we want to include to be with us in person on our wedding day. We hope you'll send us your thoughts/prayers/well wishes on October 24,2020, and we look forward to seeing you when it becomes safe to gather in person, again.

If you didn't send save the dates, sending an announcement that you're going to get married but you're not inviting them is just making it really obvious that they're not invited when you never promised that they would be, so it could be kind of insulting to your non-guests. In this case, you should just send announcements shortly after the wedding, you can look up, "marriage announcement wording," but the basic idea is similar to this:
Scott and [Fiancée] were married on October 24, 2020 in a small ceremony at [location]. Ideally you'd include a wedding photo.

My wording as more along the lines asked love you to be able to join us in person, but health guidelines restrict us from inviting everyone to join us in person.

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I could not have put it better than this.

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Wonderful ideas! Thank you!

We didn't send save the dates. But the "due to ongoing... " was worded to what we would have hoped to say. We did confirm that we can live stream.

And I totally get the whole "slap in the face" vibe if I were on the other end of here's our wedding date but you're not invited.

Agree that I would put this as a post-wedding announcement. An “in spirit invitation” just seems gift grabby.

View Quoted Comment You're welcome, good luck!

Minted has a whole section of “postponed” and “cancelled” cards. Check them out for examples! Some of them are actually super cute.

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ok this is some really good stuff. Glad I come across this.

That's what announcements are for that are sent after the wedding. There isn't any way to send them before.

View Quoted Comment I got a different (longer) response to this from you but when I clicked reply it brought me to this one. I'm going to try to respond to the longer one here anyway, so sorry if it seems out of context.


I think you'll confuse people by sending out save the dates and invitations simultaneously. If you really want to send magnets, just make the invitations magnetic and include a paper RSVP card.
I think your best option here is to live stream the ceremony, that way no one should feel left out (they might anyway, but that's not on you).
The next best option is mailing out a marriage announcement. You can have them printed ahead of time and put them in the mail the day of the wedding so everyone finds out right away.Sending an announcement isn't gift grabby. It's just an announcement. If you tell people after the fact that you got married you're not saying, "so why didn't you get us anything?"
If you tell a coworker that your birthday is tomorrow, you're going to be kind of disappointed if they don't wish you a happy birthday the next day. If, a week after your birthday, you tell them about some fun thing you did for on birthday, you're not expecting anything from them, you're just sharing information (aka having a conversation). A marriage announcement is the wedding version of the second example. Telling people that aren't invited to the wedding about it ahead of time (if they would've expected an invitation) is more like the first, so that could actually seem more like you want something (a gift) from them.

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Hey sorry I thought I deleted in time for you to not have to respond to it. I decided your second paragraph is perfect (send your thoughts and prayers etc) if I decide to send something in the mail but if not, I will just send out lil group text messages explaining. I understand where you're coming from but that is not the situation that is going to work best for my situation. It will absolutely be deemed disrespectful and pretty much deceitful for me to inform this certain group of people after the fact. It is absolutely best to be honest and straight-forward from the beginning.

I am going to try to see if someone will be willing to be in charge of the live-streaming for us but I won't find out until after I send out the invites cuz no one except the handful knows for now and all of their roles are already assigned.

Additionally, I doubt the save-the-dates and invites are going to confuse anyone but if it does, they will just contact me. Everyone is going to contact me anyway with excitedly fake angry threats of killing me for doing it this way. I know you don't know me so some of this probably sounds weird but I have a very comedic personality, all that I'm doing falls in line with my style and it would be more abnormal for me to be super traditional about this lol