Wedding Invitation Etiquette

 

What Readers Ask: “I am to be married the end of this month and my mother says that, as a matter of war time economy, she thinks we can get along without engraved invitations. Still, I am to be married in church and am to have about fifty guests all of whom, are to be invited to a little breakfast after the wedding. Won’t you write and tell us that engraved invitations are necessary so that my mother will see her mistake? She doesn’t seem to think I know.” 

I am sorry for your sake that I cannot say that the invitations must be engraved. At formal weddings they are usually engraved but there is not the least reason in the world why personal notes written, by your mother would not answer the purpose. Of course, the invitations should come from her and not from you and if she would rather write fifty notes in order to save the cost of the engraved invitations for some good war relief work, I think you should be content. 

I recall the case of a young friend of my own whose wedding invitations were written by her mother, although they were persons of really large fortune. They did it in this way because the young girl wanted to invite all her school and college friends rather than friends of her family whom she did not know and the notes were in keeping with the informality of the affair. 

The written notes, to be a success, should be well written, of course, and on white a paper of very good quality. Since they are to be thus informal it is better to word them informally— not using the third person—and of course they should be sent only to intimate friends of your own or your mother’s, or your fiance’s. – By Mary Marshall Duffee, 1917

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