The invitation to your party is the first glimpse into your celebration for your guests. For this reason, your invitations should match the occasion in both style and theme as well. Your invitation is meant to inform your invited guests about your event, but also they are to give your invitees a small glimpse into what is to come at your party.
You will want to send out your invitations at least four weeks before a smaller party, and exactly eight weeks prior for a larger event such as a wedding. You will also likely want to make sure that your party or event is not held over a holiday weekend where many of your friends and family may already have other plans, or who will not want to deal with holiday travel.
The wording on your invitation should be done in a very standard way. This means that it should include the following:
* All phrasing should always be in the third person style
* Punctuation is never used at the ends of lines on an invitation, only on names and addresses which require them
* Try not to use any abbreviations on your invitations. Spell out names, addresses, etc… fully. The one exception to this is the use of Mr. And Mrs. Both of these abbreviations are appropriate for an invitation.
* Days, dates, and times should all be spelled out completely.
* If you have a husband and wife who you will be inviting who happen to both be doctors, you can simply address your invitation to “The Doctors “Last Name” and it will be correct
* It is always socially unacceptable to write “no children” or refer to gifts, or even no gifts, on any invitations.
Each invitation should have the following information contained on it:
* The name of the host or hosts
* The purpose of the event
* The name of the guest of honor
* The day, date and time of the event
* The location of the event
* The address of the event with the street address only, never the zip code as this is tacky
Once you have your invitations completed, then it is time to get a friend to read over them for you and let you know if you have any mistakes in your text. This is very important because the last thing you want to do is send out all of your invitations with the wrong date or time on them. It is so much easier to catch and fix mistakes before the invitations are ever sent out.
You might find it surprising to know that in this day and age you can have your invitations printed at a very reasonable cost online. In addition, if you have a good graphics program and printer, you can do them yourself. If you will be having a smaller event, it is perfectly acceptable to purchase a package of the hand-written invitations from your local store and simply write in the information on them.
If you will be having a very informal party, you can have some fun and informal invitations. If you are planning a much more formal party or event such as a wedding, then you are best to stick to professionally printed invitations.