The Bride's Guide -- Ask the Bride

Ask the Bride -- Marriage Announcements

Question: >My husband and I were recently married and need to send announcements. What is the standard wording for one? We were married in a ceremony so small, only our parents and the reverend who married us were there. It seems rather much in terms of cost, time and effort, considering how simple we chose to make our ceremony.

Answer: If you want to write your wedding announcement that you will be sending to family and friends, then this is an example of the traditional wording:

Mr. and Mrs. John Smith
proudly announce
the marriage of their daughter,
Jane Smith
to
Joseph Doe
on Saturday, July 13,
nineteen hundred ninety-six
at Holy Trinity Church,
Ourtown, New York

Since you chose to have a small, simple ceremony for specific reasons, you probably don't want to spend more money on announcements than you might have spent on the whole wedding. You can have the above wording printed at Kinko's or another local copy/print shop in black ink on some nice, simple cards and mail them to your closest family and friends in matching envelopes. This would be much cheaper than the more elaborate engraving or thermography processes used for wedding invitations.

However, if your husband's parents insist sending out 250 announcements, maybe they have conflicting feelings about your choice to have such a small wedding. You could go along with their wishes to avoid problems, but if you can't afford that, you may want to ask your parents and have your husband ask his parents to contribute towards the cost of the invitations they want to send.

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