Is 5pm on invitation the afternoon or evening??

Ours starts at 5 o clock in the afternoon as well. That's exactly what we put. After plenty of research, 6 o clock is evening. So that's what we put.

Evening. I almost forgot to change mine from afternoon.

5:00 is evening. That's what I have on mine.

*technically* it's still afternoon, but everyone refers to it as evening, so we put evening on our invitations.

We put 5 o'clock in the evening because I liked how that sounded better than afternoon lol I honestly don't think it matters. It would be weird to say 3 o'clock in the evening but I think 5 can go either way and you'll be fine.

Evening. How would you use it?

My invite would just says 5PM with cocktail, drinks and dancing for the evening.

That's pretty obvious in that way.

I wouldn't state "join us in the evening at 5pm".

I just skipped using afternoon/evening. It's not actually needed per Cranes and Emily Post.

Here is an interesting link to invitation wording.

http://blog.invitationbox.com/2009/03/25/invitation-etiquette-your-faqs-answered/

I don't know if you ordered yet or not, but if you feel like waiting a bit before ordering, Vistaprint usually has a better Black Friday sale. I think last year it was like 60% or 70% off.

According to The Emily Post Institute stipulating "afternoon" or "evening" is not necessary.

http://emilypost.com/advice/formal-wedding-invitation-wording/

I actually googled this since I have the same start time and the correct term is afternoon. Evening starts at 6pm

You don't need to specify either because obviously you're not getting married at 5 in the morning.

Thank you everyone for your opinions and advice!

@VC the wording we were going for is more a "please join us for drinks dinner and dancing at five in the evening" (or five in the afternoon). I didn't wanna just end it with five or with the 5pm number. However as someone else mentioned, I could do "five o'clock", or as it seems go with either.

@AwkwardToBe thanks for the heads up!! I figured they would be on sale then, but wasn't sure if it would be better or worse (see what I did there ) than the semi-annual.

At the only event that I've been to that had different dress code for day vs evening, they used 5 as the cutoff for evening attire. So based on that experience, I would go with 5 is evening.

Evening

Well shit. I just double checked my invitation mock ups and I put afternoon! Oh well.

Evening

Evening and serve a meal for your guests