For the couple holding a pen
Traditional wording, modern wording, and the honest order the lines go in: who, when, where, what happens next, and how a guest actually replies. With phrasing you can borrow.
Wedding invitation wording goes wrong in one specific way: the couple starts formal because invitations feel like they should be formal, then spends the evening rewriting lines no one in their family would ever say aloud. The fix is to decide the register first: are your parents hosting, which makes traditional wording honest and correct, or are you writing your own day in your own voices?
Both traditions are true. 'Request the pleasure of your company' is not better than 'we are getting married and want you there' — it is only different, and one of them sounds like you. Pick the register deliberately and stay in it from the header to the last line.
Six lines make a complete invitation. Each answers exactly one question and nothing else.
Your names, or your parents' names, or both families. This line also settles the hosting question quietly; if the ceremony and reception are hosted differently, this is where the structure shows.
One phrase of invitation — 'request the honour of your presence', 'joyfully invite you', 'would love you there'. The only line where formal and modern genuinely diverge, so choose it on purpose.
Full weekday, date, month and year, then the time. Written out reads as a wedding; abbreviated reads as a memo.
Ceremony venue and town, on two lines if the address needs the street. If the evening is somewhere else, that venue follows the same day block rather than floating away to the bottom of the card.
A short line saying what happens after: 'Dinner and dancing to follow at the Old Mill.' This small sentence stops twenty guests asking whether they should leave after the vows.
A deadline as a date, and a way to answer. A phone number and a handwritten card worked in 1994. For everything guests may want to change after you print, the reply wants to live on a page.
Same date, same village, different couple. Any of these is correct; the one that is wrong is the one that sounds like a stranger.
Mr and Mrs Henrik Lindqvist request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their daughter Elin to Jonas Berg, on Saturday, the fourteenth of June, two thousand and twenty-seven, at eleven o'clock in the morning. St Mary's Church, Ullervik. Dinner and dancing to follow at Sölvegarden.
Elin Lindqvist and Jonas Berg are getting married and would love you there. Saturday 14 June 2027, eleven in the morning, St Mary's Church, Ullervik — dinner and a long evening after at Sölvegarden. Please reply by 1 May so we can seat you properly.
We're getting married. Elin and Jonas, 14 June, St Mary's Ullervik at eleven, then food and dancing at Sölvegarden until late. Tell us yes on the page by the first of May.
A printed reply card with a stamped envelope is lovely and slow; a phone number puts the answering burden on your cousin. The reply that keeps your count honest is the one a guest completes on their phone, against their own name, with their plus-one and meal choice attached.
So put the deadline and the page on the invitation: 'Please reply by 1 May at [your link]'. My Joyfullday's wedding invitation pages do this properly — every guest opens the same wording you printed, confirms in a couple of taps, and the answer lands on your guest list with the companion and dietary note already recorded. If plans move after the cards go out, you edit the page; you do not re-print the card. Draft the wording itself with Clara or Jitabi if the blank line is the hard part, then make every sentence sound like you before you publish.
How it works
Read both styles with your partner: one formal line, one plain line. Whichever pair you can both say without wincing is the tone you finish the whole invitation in.
Header, request, day, place, the after line, the reply. Let AI draft the phrasing — Jitabi on WhatsApp or Clara in the browser — then rewrite every line until it is yours.
Build the wording into a wedding invitation site with RSVP switched on, a plus-one rule and meal choices set. Print only the deadline and the link on the card.
Before sending, hand your phone to one honest reader and listen for questions. Every question exposes a line the invitation still needs.
Questions
Traditionally the hosts ask, so the parents' names head the invitation and the couple appear in the request. When hosting is shared or the couple is paying, the header can name both families or simply the couple. Whatever you pick, the header should match who is actually doing the hosting.
A link, with a phone number as the fallback for older guests. A reply card works if you will truly collect and count them; a page records each answer against a name automatically, including plus-ones and meal notes, which a card cannot do.
On the page. A single word like 'black tie' is safe to print, but the useful version of the dress note explains the ground, the weather, and the shoes, and all of that changes. Put one short hint on the card and the full sentence on the invitation site.
Eight to twelve weeks before the day for most weddings, with the reply deadline three to four weeks out. Send save-the-dates earlier for anything guests must travel or book around, and keep the wording on those cards short.
Perfectly. Plenty of couples open with 'We're getting married' and a date, and no guest is offended. What matters is consistency: the awkward version is a formal header that drifts into casual wording by the dinner note.
Get Started
Six lines, one consistent tone, a deadline that points somewhere guests can actually answer. The wording is yours — the counting can be the page's.
