The invitation checklist, from first draft to last reply

Invitations stall for a boring reason. Four small decisions have to be made before a single word can be written, and couples try to write the words first.

Here is the whole job in order. Nothing on the list depends on anything below it.

Before you write anything#

• The final guest list. Households, not names, at this stage. Every disagreement settled.
• Ceremony venue and exact start time. Not the arrival time. The two are different and guests need both.
• The reply deadline. Read the catering contract, find the final numbers date, and set your deadline three weeks earlier.
• Your three answers. Children, plus ones, gifts. Each needs one sentence you are both happy to say out loud.

The invitation itself#

• Who is inviting.
• The two names.
• Day, date, time.
• Venue name and town.
• The reply, with its date.

That is the card. If a line is not one of those, it belongs in the detail below rather than on the front. Wording, line by line covers each of them.

The detail underneath#

None of this is compulsory, and a blank one should simply be absent rather than marked as unknown. Guests read an empty heading as an oversight.

• Order of the day. Arrival, ceremony, food, dancing, carriages.
• Dress code. Two words and one honest sentence.
• Getting there. Parking, the nearest station, whether taxis exist at midnight.
• Somewhere to stay. Two or three options at different prices, with any held rate and its expiry.
• Gifts. Its own small section, further down.
• Questions. The four or five you would otherwise answer forty times.
• Who to ring. One name and one number that is not yours on the day.

The guest list, properly#

Turn households into people. This is tedious and it is what prevents the counting arguments later.

• Every guest by full name, spelled correctly.
• One email address per household, checked. Bad addresses are the single biggest cause of guests who never got it.
• Exactly how many places each household is offered.
• Who is travelling, who is elderly, who will need a phone call rather than a form.

Before you send#

• Read it aloud to somebody who is not marrying you.
• Check the date against a calendar. Say the weekday out loud.
• Send it to yourself first and open it on a phone, which is where almost everybody will read it.
• Check the link, the map and the reply form all work from that phone.
• Confirm the reply deadline is still earlier than the caterer’s date.

After you send#

• Day three. Check for bounced addresses and fix them by hand.
• Week two. Look at who has opened it and not replied. That is your chase list.
• Six weeks out. Chase, once, personally. See what to do about guests who never reply.
• Two weeks out. Final numbers to the venue, and the day’s detail out to everybody.

The two things people forget entirely#

Someone to answer questions on the day. Put a name and a number on the invitation that is not yours. You will be getting married.

Dietary needs, asked for at reply time. Asking later means asking twice. There is more on this in asking guests about dietary requirements.