Wedding invitation messages for friends

Six invitations you could actually send

Continue writing opens that message in the card with the words already in it. None of them carry a date or a venue, because each function gets a card of its own behind the first one. So all that is left is to add the functions — mehendi, sangeet, phere, reception, or whichever set your own family keeps — each with its own date, time and place. The last message is the longest of the six, and it is the only one you have to copy across yourself.

1. Right, so we're getting married. You've heard about roughly every stage of this, so it would be strange to invite you by group message. Come, and clear the whole weekend if you can — I'd rather you were around for the boring parts too.

   Continue writing with message 1

2. You're invited, obviously. Don't make me chase you for a reply for three weeks like last time. Come to the lot if you can, and if you can only pick one, pick one of the noisy ones. Those are the evenings you'll actually enjoy.

   Continue writing with message 2

3. We're getting married. You've been around for the whole unglamorous build-up to this — the venue that fell through, the list we rewrote four times — so it would be wrong to let you find out from a poster. Come early and stay late.

   Continue writing with message 3

4. Getting married. Your duties: turn up, dance badly, and keep at least two of my relatives talking to each other. No gift required. Attendance is genuinely non-negotiable and I will be checking.

   Continue writing with message 4

5. We're getting married, and I want you there for the dull bits too — the morning nobody photographs, the long hour of waiting around, the part where somebody's uncle takes charge of everything. Those are the bits I'd rather not do without you.

   Continue writing with message 5

6. We're getting married and I'm not doing a group forward about it. Come to the whole thing if you possibly can. If you can only manage one, do the small one where everybody sits around eating and complaining about the arrangements, because that is the bit I actually want you at — the big day I will mostly be looking at the back of somebody's head. Bring nothing, dance badly, stay too late.

   Copy

Writing your own

Be exactly as precise on the function cards as you would be on a formal invitation. This is the one place where sounding casual costs you something: a friend who is told sometime in December books leave for the wrong week. Fill in each function's date, time and place as plainly as you would for an uncle — that is what the cards are for — and then be as informal as you like in the message, which is the part they will actually read twice.

Then ask for something specific. Come if you can is what you send to a colleague. Clear the whole weekend, or I need you there for the haldi, is a request rather than a notification — and with close friends the request is the actual invitation. The cards can tell them when the haldi is; only you can tell them that the haldi is the one you want them for. The formal wording cannot do either, which is the whole reason this page exists separately.