Invite help

[nicole]

My fiance and I are having 2 receptions. One reception right after our wedding in the town we live now, and another "reception" later in my hometown for the people who couldn't make it to the wedding. I want to invite everyone to both, but I'm not sure how to do it.

Do I need 2 seperate mailings, or can I include invites to both parties in the same envelope? I also need to convey the 2nd "reception" will be much more casual, and I know the invite is the place to do that, but can I have one formally worded invite and another, more casually worded invite in the same envelope, each with their own fonts? Please let me know if you have any ideas!

Ordering invites is still a way off for us, but I'm trying to work out a budget and knowing whether we need one invite or two invites would be helpful info!

Oops, I almost forgot. How should the invitation to the second reception be worded?

[Atlanta_eBride]

Each reception should have it's own card all together with the invitation. I would make them look similar in terms of fonts and such so that all of your enclosures look like they belong together but I think the wording can be more casual for your second one. I think you could include "attire" on the second more casual reception card. I would assume that most people would understand that the reception following the wedding wasn't casual but just in case you might want to clarify. For me, if I got one that specified the attire, I would realize that the other one was not if it didn't have a notation on it.

As far as wording, do a google search on casual reception cards and see what is out there. HTH!

[MandyMaloo]

I have to say, Atlanta_eBride took the words right out of my mouth! I totally agree. Each reception card should be seperate and have it's own wording. I think a google search is best as well. I think another great idea would be word of mouth. Let everyone know what's going to be happening before hand (tell friends and family to spread the word to key guests). I'd start looking at invitations now though, since Wedding peak season has come to end and you can usually find some great deals on stationary. I know FH and I were able to find PERFECT invitations for 30% off just becuase we are looking into ordering them in an "off season".

Good luck!

[ejs]

How far is your hometown from where you live now?

DH and I got married in Hawaii and had one reception in CA (where my family lives, and us) and in MA (where DH's family is). We didn't invite people to both for a number of reasons:
* We knew it wasn't practical for people to go to both. So we weren't going to ask people to give up that much of their free time for us. Or ask them to spend that much money to travel for us.
* We didn't want people to feel that we expected them to go to both.
* We didn't want to look like we were asking people for two gifts (one for each reception invitation).

Anyway, if you decide that you still want to invite everyone to both, you definitely need two different invitations in two different envelopes, mailed separately. The "feel" of the invitations will let people know what to wear.

By the way, you will also save money on invitations if you don't invite everyone to both. :-)

[nicole]

Atlanta_eBride & MandyMaloo - thanks for your responses! So are you saying I should have one invitation to the wedding ceremony, and then 2 reception cards, one for each party? I have looked up wording, but most of it says "So and so will be married on blah blah blah" and I just thought that might be redundant with the invite right there. Do you think it would be okay?

ejs - The wedding will be in St. Louis, and the 2nd reception will be in Spokane, Washington. I would just invite all the people in St. Louis to the wedding and all the people in Spokane to the 2nd reception, but a few people in Spokane have expressed interest in coming to the wedding. I feel like I would need to invite everyone in Spokane to both so they can decide if they want to witness the actual wedding ceremony or if they just want to come to the post-wedding reception there. I see what you mean about people thinking they were being asked for 2 gifts or to attend 2 receptions, but I also feel that if we just invited people to the 2nd reception, they'd feel like they weren't good enough to be asked to the "bigger" wedding.

So I guess what I need is wording to suggest that we're having a 2nd reception in case people aren't able to make it to the 1st? :confused:

[ejs]

Oh! I misunderstood. I thought that you were having three events on different days: wedding, reception 1, reception 2. I gotcha now!

Is everyone who is invited to reception 1 invited to the wedding?

If so, here's what I would do:

Send an envelope that includes an invitation to the wedding and reception 1. This would go to anyone you would like to attend the wedding, including Spokane people. I would also consider getting an insert card printed or printing on some of your reception cards something like, "We hope you can join us on our wedding day. If you're unable to attend, we hope to see you at the reception we're having in Spokane on date. Invitation to follow." I would include this note in the wedding invitations that are going to Spokane.

Send a second envelope that includes an invitation to reception 2 to your Spokane friends/family and anyone in St Louis you think would go to Spokane.

I hope I phrased that correctly and it doesn't sound too complicated.

[Kellijo14]

We are doing the same thing. We had our wedding and reception in my hometown in Indiana. Then we are having a separate reception in a couple of weeks in WI. We invited some people from WI to the wedding in IN and a few came down - mostly my DH's immediate family, but his grandma/grandpa and close friends drove down too. We let everyone know that they were invited to the wedding, but we didn't expect them to come (we did this at holidays and his parents played a big role in word of mouth). After only a few people expressed interest in driving down to IN, we sent them invitations to the wedding.

Then we sent a separate invitation for the event in WI. I think we had about 20-25 invitations that went to both places, but it was important to get those close to us to both events. Everyone knew this was our plan from the beginning of our engagement so I think people knew what to expect when they got their invitation. It also saved us from having to buy and make a lot more invitations than we actually needed because we knew how many was going to be invited to each event.

[framboise]

Nicole, this is almost exactly what we're doing too & your question is floating in the back of my mind a lot lately. Why haven't we discussed this in more detail with each other in our journals yet? We'll have to cover that. :p

Anyway, I don't have any specific suggestions at the moment, but thanks for asking the question!

~Nicole

[j.d.l.102205]

Hey Nicole...way off subject but where at in St Louis are you getting married. I'm getting married in St Louis (north county area) in Oct. Do you live in St Louis? Sorry with all the questions, I know it has nothing to do with your original question.
Like some of the girls said beforehand I would just include two reception cards one being more casual.
Happy planning!!

[nicole]

ejs - that was the original plan, actually, but we're doing two events now.

Kellijo14 - How are you fairly deciding who to invite to the main event and who not to? I'd love to save money any way I can, but I don't want to risk hurting someone's feelings by making them think they aren't wanted at the wedding. Are you just sending out feelers and inviting just the people who have expressed interest in coming to the wedding?

framboise - That so weird we never talked about this before! we'll have to brainstorm together!

j.d.l.102205 - I wish I knew where we are getting married. That's still TBD. We can't find anyplace we like, but it's getting to be crunch time! I live in St. Louis (south county for me) :)

I had another idea I wanted to throw out there. I wasn't planning on doing inner envelopes (I planned on making my own invites), but I thought maybe I could have 2 inner envelopes in the invite, one for each party. What do you guys think of that?

[sublime311]

OMG, is Kelli Jo is your name, or is Jo short for something else?!? Cuz Kelli Jo is MY name! What an unexpected coincidink!! I think I've only ever run across one other Kelli Jo!

[Kellijo14]

Kellijo14 - How are you fairly deciding who to invite to the main event and who not to? I'd love to save money any way I can, but I don't want to risk hurting someone's feelings by making them think they aren't wanted at the wedding. Are you just sending out feelers and inviting just the people who have expressed interest in coming to the wedding?


We did a lot of phone calls/emails when we decided our wedding date. We told everyone that we wanted them to come. But we understand that it is a long drive and we don't want them to feel obligated to come after receiving an invitation. We also told them that we're cheap (it works well with our relaxed attitude) and we wanted to save money by not sending everyone invites. Most people understood and didn't want to make the drive. (We had people who thanked us for not 'requesting' them to come to the wedding so they didn't have to make the drive.) At the same time, we also told them about the WI reception so they could 'save the date' for it.

Those that were considering coming, we sent invitations to. Those that said not to worry, we didn't send. It actually worked out very well. I only had to buy 50 invites, instead of 200 for everyone.

It also helped that DH decided early on that he just wanted his close family (mom, dad, sister, grandparents) & his close friends there. They were the people who came. His extended family was over siblings, plus tons of kids - they could have filled up the venue themselves. We got our small intimate wedding and now we'll get our big blow out event in two weeks. (Keep in mind that we had less than 70 people at our wedding - mostly my aunts & uncles & cousins).

[Kellijo14]

OMG, is Kelli Jo is your name, or is Jo short for something else?!? Cuz Kelli Jo is MY name! What an unexpected coincidink!! I think I've only ever run across one other Kelli Jo!
Yes! That's my name! I had a hard time deciding what to do with my middle name when I got married because I love my name so much!!!
---
I was just thinking about my previous message and I think I should also add that originally, we were planning to do a destination wedding in FL so we actually had to add lots of people to our guestlist because originally it was just going to be our immediate family. Therefore, we had to add people - not cut. In the beginning, no other guests were invited so when we decided to change to my hometown, we had to contact people to see if they were interested.

[nicole]

Okay, this is my first wording attempt. I used abbreviations since it's supposed to be informal, but I'm not 100% sure about that. I also used a phone # instead of a reply card, also conveying informality. Please make corrections/suggestions. If it's crap, let me know. Thanks!!!

Nicole ------- and Aaron -------
will be married on September 10th, 2006
in Saint Louis, Missouri
Please join them at a celebration honoring their union
Saturday October 10th, 2006
6 o'clock
Neal Fosseen Room
Mukogawa Fort Wright Instutute
Spokane, Washington

please respond by September 29th
509.XXX.XXXX

[ejs]

This is what we used for one of our post-destination wedding receptions (of course, it was nicely formatted):

Margaret and Bill xxxxxx
are pleased to announce the marriage of
bride's name and groom's name
on October 16, 2003 in Maui, Hawaii

Please join us for a celebration on
Saturday, November 8, 2003
2:00pm - 5:00pm

location
address
city, California

We included RSVP postcards.