How to Word Wedding Reception-Only Invitations
Are you going to invite everyone on your wedding guest list to attend both your ceremony and your reception? If so, you'll only need to worry about sending out one set of wedding invitations to all your guests. On these invitations, you can point out that you'll be holding a ceremony with a reception to follow for your guests.
But in some cases, couples will choose to only invite a small portion of the people on their wedding guest lists to their ceremonies. As a result, they'll need to send out what are known as wedding reception-only invitations to everyone else.
If you decide to do this, you should spend time thinking about how to word a reception-only invitation in the right way. You don't want to draw too much attention to the fact that you're sending a reception-only invitation to some people. But you also want to make sure that those who get wedding reception-only invitations receive the proper message when they read them.
We've created a guide on coming up with the right wording for wedding invitations like this. Take a look at it below.
Decide How Formal You Want Wedding Reception-Only Invitations to Be
When you first sit down to create wedding reception-only invitations, you'll need to make a decision on how formal you want them to be. Would you like to go with traditional wedding reception-only invitations, or are you okay with making your invitations a little bit more informal?
For the sake of this exercise, we're going to focus on coming up with the right wording for traditional wedding reception-only invitations. But it's worth noting that, if you decide to go the informal route, you can still follow most of the tips listed here. You'll just be able to eliminate a few of the steps we're going to break down for you.
For example, informal wedding reception-only invitations usually won't have a host listed. They also won't typically have the full names of the bride and groom. Keep this in mind as you move forward and adjust the wording for your wedding invitations accordingly.
Choose Who Will Be the Official Host for Your Wedding Reception
The first thing you'll want to include in wedding reception-only invitations is who will be hosting your wedding reception. More often than not, the host will be either the bride's parents or both sets of parents.
Either way, it'll be important for you to lead off your wedding reception-only invitations by mentioning who will be hosting your reception. It should look something like this:
Mr. and Mrs. John Smith
along with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Jones
request the honour of your presence
In this case, these wedding reception-only invitations will feature both sets of parents hosting your wedding reception with the bride's parents listed first. But if you'd like to make it just the bride's parents, you can simply remove the "along with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Jones" part from your wedding invitations.
Highlight the Fact You're Inviting People to Your Wedding Reception
You won't want to wait too long to let those who receive your wedding reception-only invitations know that these invitations are only for your reception. So after mentioning who will be hosting the reception, you should immediately reveal that your wedding invitations are reception-only invitations.
You can do this by including a line that says something like:
at an evening reception
By putting this line front and centre on your wedding reception-only invitations, you'll indicate that the people who get these invitations are only invited to your reception. It's best to put a line like this toward the top of your wedding invitations so that it doesn't get lost in the shuffle and overlooked.
Write Out the Full Names of Both the Bride and Groom
When people open up your wedding invitations, they might not recognize the names of the hosts right away. It's why you're going to need to get around to writing out the full names of both the bride and groomer as soon as you can.
Ideally, it should come right after the line that you include about people being invited to your evening reception. It should look a little something like this if the host for your wedding reception will be the bride's parents:
to celebrate the marriage of their daughter
Joan Smith
to
Thomas Jones, Jr.
If the host for your wedding reception will be both sets of parents, then you can tweak this line so that it looks more like this:
to celebrate the marriage of their children
Joan Smith
and
Thomas Jones, Jr.
Either way, it'll be imperative that you draw plenty of attention to the names of the bride and groom. You may want to go as far as to design wedding invitations that'll make these names stand out from all the other words that will appear on your wedding reception-only invitations.
Spell Out the Date of Your Wedding Reception and Be Very Specific
The whole point of sending out wedding invitations in the first place is to let those invited to your wedding reception know when it'll be. It'll allow people to make sure they set aside time to attend your wedding reception.
So once you've written out the names of the bride and groom, you'll want to spell out the date of your wedding reception, and you'll want to be as specific as you can possibly be while doing it.
Here is what the date should look like on your wedding reception:
on Saturday, the twenty-sixth of August
two thousand and twenty-three
You should double-check and triple-check the date on your wedding reception-only invitations prior to sending them out to those on your guest list. You might know your wedding date by heart and think you won't make a mistake when writing it out. But with so much going on throughout the wedding planning process, you never know.
It would be worth going over the date several times to make sure it's correct. The last thing you want to do is have to advise people that you included the wrong date since this could cause a lot of confusion.
Include the Exact Time Your Wedding Reception Will Start
In addition to including the correct date on your wedding reception-only invitations, you will also need to provide people with an indication of when your wedding reception will start. This will obviously be another key detail that you'll have to share to ensure people show up for your wedding reception on time.
Here is how the starting time for your wedding reception should look:
at seven o'clock in the evening
Just like with the date for your wedding reception, you should double-check and triple-check the time for it. You don't want to steer people in the wrong direction here and have them arrive at your wedding reception too early or too late.
Reveal the Location of Your Wedding Reception
As you near the end of your wedding reception-only invitations, you'll need to let your wedding guests know where you'll be holding your reception. You should provide them with both the name of your wedding reception venue and the town in which it's located.
While doing this, you're welcome to be very specific with the location. But it's actually okay to scale things back and only include the name of your wedding reception venue along with its general location.
You can write out the location of your wedding reception venue like this:
at The Spire, Brighton
If you write out the entire address for your wedding reception venue, you'll run the risk of having it take up entirely too much space. It might make your wedding reception-only invitations a lot longer than you'd like. So there isn't anything wrong with condensing the location down like we just did to keep things short and sweet.
Share What Time Your Wedding Reception Will End
At the very end of your wedding reception-only invitations, you should let all your wedding reception guests know what time you're planning to have the festivities end. It'll give people an opportunity to arrange for their own transportation home.
If you're going with traditional wedding reception-only invitations, you might even want to go as far as to use the traditional phrase, "Carriages arrive at..." This is a fancy way of telling people what time they should plan to leave your wedding reception venue.
Here is how you can finish off your wedding reception-only invitations:
Carriages arrive at midnight
This will wrap up your wedding reception-only invitations while providing people with every last bit of information they'll need without forcing them to read through too many words.
Review the Wording for Your Wedding Reception-Only Invitations
As long as you've taken each of the steps we just laid out, you should be left with the right wording for your wedding reception-only invitations. But you should always take the time to review this wording to make sure everything sounds the way you want it to.
Let's put together all the different lines we've come up with thus far to see how your wedding reception-only invitations sound:
Mr. and Mrs. John Smith
along with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Jones
request the honour of your presence
at an evening reception
to celebrate the marriage of their children
Joan Smith
and
Thomas Jones, Jr.
on Saturday, the twenty-sixth of August
two thousand and twenty-three
at seven o'clock in the evening
at The Spire, Brighton
Carriages arrive at midnight
In this case, your wedding reception-only invitations will only be 59 words long. But they'll provide people with all the relevant information they'll need.
At the same time, it'll also make it clear that the people who receive these invitations will only be invited to your wedding reception. But it'll do it without making them feel slighted in the least.
Figure Out Who Will Receive Wedding Reception-Only Invitations
Once you have the wording for your wedding reception-only invitations all figured out, you'll still need to figure out who exactly will be receiving them. You should go through your wedding guest list and decide who will be invited to both your wedding ceremony and reception versus who will only be invited to your wedding reception.
This is your wedding, so you're free to invite whoever you would like to your wedding ceremony and/or reception. But you'll want to get on the same page with your soon-to-be spouse about who is going to make the cut before you begin sending out invitations.
Send Wedding Reception-Only Invitations Along With Other Invitations
When you're done deciding who will receive wedding reception-only invitations, you'll be welcome to start sending them out. But one final thing you should keep in mind is that it would be a good idea to send all your wedding invitations out at one time. This should include both the wedding invitations for those who will be invited to your ceremony and your wedding reception-only invitations.
If you send these invitations out at separate times, there might be some people who will be receiving wedding reception-only invitations who might not think they're invited to your wedding at all. They may speak with those who got regular wedding invitations from you and get the impression that you haven't invited them for one reason or another.
By sending all your wedding invitations out at the same time, you can avoid this situation. You can also guarantee that you'll be able to start getting RSVPs back as quickly as possible.
Order Wedding Reception-Only Invitations Here
Coming up with the right wording for wedding reception-only invitations can be challenging if you don't know what you're doing. But as you've seen here, there is a simple process you can go through to get the wording for these invitations just right.
No matter which wording you use on wedding reception-only invitations, though, you should make sure you pick out the right wedding invitations from the start. Pemberly Fox can provide you with some of the most beautiful luxury wedding invitations you'll ever see.
Contact us now to place a wedding invitation order.