Every wedding invitation answers the same five questions: who is hosting, who is getting married, when, where, and what the guest is expected to do next. Wording is only the register you answer them in. Get the five right and almost any tone works; miss one and the most beautiful card on the table still generates a phone call.
The five lines every invitation carries
Before choosing a tone, write the plain version. If you cannot fill in these five, no amount of calligraphy will cover it.
- The host line. Who is doing the inviting. This is the line that carries all the family politics, and the one people rewrite most.
- The request. The verb that does the inviting - “request the honour of your presence”, “would love you to join them”, “are getting married”. This single phrase sets the formality of the whole card.
- The couple. Both names, spelled the way each person actually spells them. Check this against something written, not from memory.
- The date, time and place. Including the day of the week, which is the cheapest error-check you get: a guest who sees “Saturday 12 June” will notice if 12 June is a Tuesday.
- What happens next. Reception details, dress code, and how to reply. An invitation that does not tell a guest how to reply is a card, not an invitation.
Who is hosting: the line people rewrite most
The host line is a courtesy, not an accounting statement. It says who is welcoming you, and it is the reason a couple who paid for the entire day might still open with their parents’ names.
One set of parents hosting
Mr and Mrs James Whitfield
request the honour of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter
Eleanor Grace
to
Mr Thomas Reed
The traditional form, and the reason older invitations name the bride by first and middle name only - she is being introduced by the people already named above her.
Both families hosting
Together with their families
Eleanor Whitfield
and
Thomas Reed
invite you to celebrate their marriage
The most useful line in modern wording. “Together with their families” is doing quiet work: it honours both sides without anyone having to decide whose name is printed first, and it survives step-parents, second marriages and complicated households without drawing attention to any of them.
The couple hosting
Eleanor Whitfield and Thomas Reed
invite you to join them
as they marry
Clean, and increasingly the default. If you want the warmth of the family line without the formality, “together with their parents” sits comfortably above your names.
Three registers, same information
These say exactly the same thing. Choose by matching the day rather than the tradition - formal wording on a barn lunch reads borrowed, and casual wording in a cathedral reads underdressed.
Formal
Mr and Mrs James Whitfield
request the honour of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter
Eleanor Grace
to
Mr Thomas Reed
Saturday, the twelfth of June
two thousand and twenty-seven
at half past three in the afternoon
St Anne’s Church, Kew
The favour of a reply is requested by the first of May
Modern
Together with their families
Eleanor Whitfield & Thomas Reed
invite you to their wedding
Saturday 12 June 2027 at 3.30pm
St Anne’s Church, Kew
Dinner and dancing to follow
Please reply by 1 May
Casual
We’re getting married!
Eleanor & Thomas
Saturday 12 June 2027, 3.30pm
St Anne’s, Kew - then food, drinks and dancing
Let us know by 1 May
Notice what does not change between them: the day of the week, the full date, the venue, and a signal about what happens afterwards. The register moves; the five lines do not.
The cases the templates skip
Most wording guides stop at “formal or casual” and leave you alone with the situations that actually made you search. These are conventions rather than rules - there is no wording police, and the version your family can read without flinching is the correct one.
A parent who has died
Eleanor Grace Whitfield
daughter of Mr James Whitfield
and the late Mrs Anne Whitfield
and
Mr Thomas Reed
The alternative is to leave the host line to the living and remember them in the ceremony instead, where you have more room than a card allows. Both are common. Read each aloud and keep whichever you can finish.
Divorced parents, both hosting
Mrs Anne Whitfield
Mr James Whitfield
request the pleasure of your company
at the marriage of their daughter
Separate lines, no “and” joining them into a couple, mother conventionally first. If step-parents are hosting too, this is exactly where “together with their families” earns its keep.
A second marriage
Eleanor Whitfield and Thomas Reed
together with their children
invite you to celebrate their marriage
Host yourselves, name your children if you want them named, and drop the parental host line entirely. There is no convention requiring a second wedding to be quieter than a first.
An interfaith or two-culture ceremony
Where two traditions each have their own wording, the usual mistake is to blend them into one paragraph that satisfies neither. It reads better to give each its own block - one ceremony, one set of wording, one clear time - than to average them. If the two families read different languages, decide whether the second version is a translation or an invitation in its own right; that choice changes the whole layout, and there is a separate guide on writing in more than one script.
Several events over several days
Do not try to fit a mehendi, a ceremony and a reception onto one card by shrinking the type. Give each event its own block with its own time and place, and be explicit about who is invited to which - the guest reading it should never have to guess whether they are included. That is easier on a page than on paper, because each guest can be shown only the events they are actually invited to.
What people get wrong
- No day of the week. The single most useful error-check on the card, and the first thing to go when space runs short.
- No reply instruction. Guests who are not told how to reply will reply however they like - text, phone, a comment to your mother - and you will be reconciling four channels by hand.
- A vague deadline. “Please reply soon” is not a date. Give a specific one, and set it against your caterer’s final-numbers day, not against the wedding.
- Ambiguity about who is invited. If the invitation does not say, someone will assume children and a plus-one are included. Say the number of seats rather than hinting at it.
- The venue without directions. A venue name is not an address, and an address is not directions.
- Unchecked spelling of a name. Check every name against something written down. This is the one mistake that is remembered.
Where the wording actually lands
Wording is written for paper and then, usually, retyped somewhere else. If the invitation lives on a page, the same five lines still apply - they just get more room, and the last one stops being a printed instruction and becomes something the guest can act on where they are standing. The reply arrives attached to a name instead of as a card you have to transcribe.
It also means the wording is not final in the way print is. A time that changes, a venue that moves, a name spelled wrong - on paper that is a reprint and a round of apologetic messages; on a page it is an edit.
Frequently asked questions
Whose names go first on a wedding invitation?
Traditionally the hosts - historically the bride's parents, which is why older invitations open with their names rather than the couple's. If you are hosting yourselves, your own names lead. There is no rule that one partner must come before the other; use whichever order reads better aloud.
Do we have to say who is paying?
No. The host line is about who is welcoming guests, not who paid. Plenty of couples who fund the day themselves still open with both sets of parents, because the sentence is a courtesy rather than an invoice.
How formal should the wording be?
Match the day, not the tradition. A black-tie evening in a cathedral carries formal wording comfortably; the same phrasing on a garden lunch reads borrowed. The test is whether you could say the sentence out loud to a guest without laughing.
Should we spell out the date and time?
Formal invitations spell everything out - "Saturday, the twelfth of June, two thousand and twenty-seven, at half past three". Modern ones do not. Both are correct. What matters more is that the day of the week is there, because it is the fastest way for a guest to catch a mistake.
How do we word the dress code without sounding stuffy?
Put it last, in plain words, and keep it to a few. "Black tie", "Lounge suits", "Garden party - flat shoes advised". If you find yourself writing a paragraph, what you actually need is a note on the invitation page rather than a longer dress code.
What if a parent has died?
Two common approaches. Name them with a phrase that makes it clear - "daughter of Mr James Whitfield and the late Mrs Anne Whitfield" - or leave the host line to the living and remember them in the ceremony instead. Neither is more correct. Pick the one you can read without it catching.
Can the invitation wording be in two languages?
Yes, and it is worth deciding early whether the second language is a translation or its own invitation - the two look very different on the page. There is a separate guide on that.
Related: Wording generator (free) · Setting an RSVP deadline · Writing in two scripts · How many seats per invitation · Several events, one invitation · Browse invitation designs