Wedding and party invitation advice

One of the most useful wedding party planing tools are the invitations.
When planing an event it is obvious that knowing exactly how many people plan attend will make things easier and less expensive.

They can be as simple as a hand dashed note or very elegant with numerous parts and envelopes.
Advance notice will tell you how many favors to have on hand. It also will tell you how many chairs, tables and the amount of food to have.

But in order to gather this information there needs to be a rhyme and reason to the invitations.
A simple invitation for an informal gathering where you will be serving simple snacks, or punch and pie needs only to be a single folded notice with a short greeting on the front of the card and details such as time and address on the inside.

Simple cards such as these can be found in most of the marts as well as stationary and book stores.
They usually can be purchased in packs of 10 or 25 or so and come complete with envelopes.
If you want to try your hand you may find making this type of card is not that difficult and with all the programs for computers it can be down right simple.

Just pick up some envelops and fancy paper at the stationary store and you are in business.
On the other hand invitations for a more formal affair would likely include an outer envelope with the invitation and the R.S.V.P information.

R.S.V.P. is an abbreviation for the French expressions “ripondez s’il vous plant”, which translates to “please respond” in english.
It has been reported that more and more people are not responding to invitations and it probably is due to one or all of these 3 reasons.
1. People have become rude and do not want to bother replying.
2. People do not understand that R.S.V.P means respond even if you are not coming.
3. People are just keeping the stamp.

Personally we thing people are keeping the stamps but the real reason probably is people do not understand that they should respond even if they are not planning to attend.

One useful tactic that is getting more and more attention is save the date. It seems like folks have less time to spend on more events so the idea is to let them know far in advance that you are planning a party, and that they would do well to put it on the calender so that when the invitation comes they can R.S.V.P right away.

Save the dates can be as simple as a card or include a favor of some kind.
We have had customers buy ornaments and wind chimes for save the date gifts.

At any rate you can help to avoid as much confusion as possible by including the choices, we will attend, and we will not attend.
If you do not have the time or inclination to make your own favors you will need to enlist the talent of others.

Your local quick printer, wedding planner or party store should have a source for invitation and this is a good place to start.
You can view and hold a number of invitations to judge size, weight and texture of the paper and colors not to mention fonts.