Wedding invitation messages for relatives

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. We are getting married, and it would be an honour to have you there to bless us. You are welcome at every part of it, the smaller gatherings as much as the ceremony itself. Please do come, and do bring everybody at home with you.

   Continue writing with message 1

2. With a great deal of happiness we are inviting you to our wedding. A printed card is on its way to you, but we did not want you hearing it from anybody but us first. Your presence would mean a great deal to us both.

   Continue writing with message 2

3. We are getting married, and we would like you there for all of it. Please do come, and please come early — there is a whole side of the family who have been asking after you and would not forgive us if you arrived at the last minute.

   Continue writing with message 3

4. You are invited to our wedding, and your family with you. We know the travel is not nothing, so tell us what you need — a booking, a room, somebody to meet you at the station — and we will arrange it. It would not feel like a family occasion without you.

   Continue writing with message 4

5. We are getting married, and in the same hall where half this family has been married, which we did not plan and are now rather pleased about. Come and tell us who sat where last time, and who is still not speaking to whom.

   Continue writing with message 5

6. We are getting married, and we would like to invite you and your family to every part of it — the smaller gatherings as much as the ceremony. Your blessings matter to us more than anything else about the day. If travelling is difficult, please say so rather than quietly deciding not to come: we would far rather arrange the journey, or a room, than have you not be there.

   Copy

Writing your own

Invite the household, not the person. And your family, or aap sab, is not padding — for most relatives it is the difference between an invitation they can accept and one they have to ask about. The printed invitations say it for a reason, and a message that leaves it out reads as narrower than you meant.

Let the function cards carry the dates. An elderly relative reading a paragraph with four dates buried in it will phone somebody to check, and they are right to: a date in a sentence is a date that can be misread. Each function on its own card, with its own timing and its own place, is how a printed invitation has always done this, and it leaves the message free to be nothing but the asking — which is the part that decides whether they come.

Then deal with the travel in the invitation itself. Tell us what you need and we will arrange it does more work than any amount of warm wording, because the real reason an elderly relative does not come is rarely that they did not want to. Saying it up front removes the one obstacle, and it is also the sentence that tells them they were genuinely wanted rather than simply listed.