5 Common Wedding Invitation Mistakes To Avoid Making
When you’re doing something for the first time, you’re bound to make some mistakes. Luckily you can learn from the errors of others and avoid making the same mistakes with wedding invitations
Here we are covering off some of the most common wedding invitation mistakes we come across when couples are getting their wedding stationery designed.
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Common wedding invitation mistakes
Here are 5 common wedding invitation mistakes, and how to avoid them.
1. Sending out incorrect information on the wedding invite
You need to worry about ensuring all the details are correct. This means confirming your ceremony time in advance. Making sure phone numbers are correct. You may just have one number wrong, but that’ll make all the difference and could mean an expensive reprint of your wedding invitations (or really confused guests).
How to avoid this mistake: When you receive your draft wedding invitation, carefully check everything. Get a detail-orientated friend or your partner to double check them for you too as fresh eyes spot mistakes a lot faster.
Invitation designers and printers typically copy and paste any information they are sent, so I can’t accidentally type something wrong . We have a wedding invitation proofing checklist available which gives you a full list of things you should be looking for.
Bonus tip – Pay a little extra and get a hard copy invitation to review by asking your designer. Many people find checking a hard copy much easier than something on the computer.
2. Ordering the wrong number of wedding invites
Plenty of couples come back requiring extra copies of their wedding invitations because they’ve miscounted guest numbers, some have gone missing in the post, or they forgot a guest.
Printing anything comes with fixed setup costs which, spread over the average set of invites doesn’t come too much. But if you’re only ordering 3 or 4, then those set up costs start to increase.
On the other end of the scale, it can be a really expensive mistake to order too many wedding invitations.
Remember that most of your guests will be in “couples”, so if you are having 150 guests, you do not need 150 invitations. Chances are you would more likely need closer to 90-100 invitations for that size of wedding.
How to avoid this mistake: Before you get your wedding invitations printed, write a comprehensive guest list and get your families and partner to chip in with their guest lists too. Group each into couples/partners/households and count them up – then add 10-15 spare invites on top of that.
3. Overloading guests with too much information on the stationery
Striking the balance between enough information and too much information is a tricky one to navigate. The more information you give your guests, the less likely they are to read it all. On the other hand, if you want to go for minimal information, be aware that some people will be really confused!
How to avoid this mistake: If you want to share lots of detail, then create a wedding website and load it all up there. Keep the essential bits on your wedding invitation and direct guests to visit your website for more information. That’ll ensure people actually read everything they need to read and will keep the guests happy.
4. Having a really early RSVP date
You should send wedding invitations to guests between two to three months before your wedding. That should be enough time for guests to RSVP and plan annual leave from their jobs. It will also allow them enough time to organize travel and accommodation arrangements before the big day.
Your wedding caterer should only need a couple of weeks notice (sometimes a month for bigger events) and your day-of wedding stationery will need to be finalized around that time also. If you have a longer than three month RSVP date, your guest’s plans may change – work things come up, relationships break up, pandemics happen, travel arrangements go awry.
It’s annoying not having final numbers for your own sanity and your wedding budget, but we can assure you, it is worse having people ring a couple of weeks out saying they can’t make it anymore. We cover this off in more detail in our guide to setting your RSVP date.
How to avoid this mistake: Your RSVP date should be no more than a month to six weeks before your wedding day. If you are concerned about wedding guests not being able to come, send a “Save the Date”.
Save the Dates are traditionally sent approximately 1 year to 6 months prior to a wedding.
5. Sending out Save the Dates when budget is an issue
If you have a very tight wedding budget then trying to save on stationary costs is a good idea. So rather than sending printing and sending two invitation, you could choose to not bother with the extra expense of Save the Dates.
Yes, they are useful, and fun, and we recommend them to a lot of people, but they are only a nice-to-have. The other issue is that once you’ve sent them to your guests, that’s it, they’re invited. It’s a bit embarrassing to have to go uninviting guests who have received Save the Dates.
How to avoid this mistake: If you’re on a tight budget, skip the Save the Date and send an email to key guests, or give them a call to ensure they know your wedding date has been set. It’s free!
If you really want to send Save the Dates, but there’s a risk you may have to scale back your wedding day, only send Save the Dates to the core group of guests that’ll attend. You can always invite someone who didn’t receive a Save the Date at the time of sending the wedding invitations.
Summary
The saying of measure twice and cut once definitely applies when working on your wedding invitations. Mistakes range from putting the wrong information on the wedding invite, to sending invites too early or spending budget on Save the Dates when the budget is tight.
This guide should have helped you be more aware of the potential mistakes you can make with your wedding invites and provided guidance on how to to avoid them.
Related reading – 6 Months To Plan A Wedding – Complete Guide
