Send the Perfect Wedding Invitations by Avoiding Common Mistakes

If you think planning your wedding is stressful now, how will you react when you realize your perfect wedding invitations are not so perfect? Unfortunately, many couples run into invitation problems that can bring their wedding plans to a screeching halt.

Knowing how to prevent common invitation problems is just as important as knowing how to handle them once they arise. Although there are many easy wedding invitation traps to fall into, none of these traps have to cause irreparable damage to your wedding day.

If you heed the following advice, you can overcome any invitation obstacle.

Ordering Invitations Too Late

Couples often get so wrapped up in planning the smallest details of their wedding, they overlook the major necessities. Ordering your wedding invitations with time to spare is one of those major necessities. Delays can create a blunder in that you may be putting your invitations in the mail a bit too late.

To resolve this issue, you need to use a professional online wedding paper company. Online stationers make customizing and ordering your invitations faster and easier than ordering through a traditional retail paper outlet.

After crafting a custom invitation that matches your style, your wedding paper company enables you to review and proof your invitation online before printing your order. This eliminates the need for mailed proofs, which is a major time saver that will help you get your invitations in the mail on time.

Preventing the Crisis: Mail invitations six to eight weeks before your wedding. This means you will need to order them at least four months prior to your event. Neglecting to do so will limit the time your stationer has to create proofs for you. If you have corrections to these proofs, waiting for the changes to be made will cut into your mailing time.

Guests Already Have Plans

Mailing your invitations six to eight weeks prior to your wedding will give most guests adequate time to prepare for your wedding. However, six weeks may not be enough time for out-of-town guests to plan to attend.

They may need to rearrange their schedules, make travel arrangements and find hotel accommodations. By the time your invitation hits their mailbox, these out-of-towners will have limited time to make these plans.

If you have close relatives or friends from out-of-town who you hoped would attend, you may be disappointed when they decline your invitation. While there is very little you can do in this situation, it is appropriate to call the invited guest to discover if there is anything you can do to assist them with their travel arrangements or accommodations.

If the guest agrees to your help, be prepared to follow through with it. But if they decline, assure them that you understand.

Preventing the Crisis: Avoid this situation by giving out-of-town guests more notice about your wedding. Save the date cards, generally sent six month prior to the wedding, simply tell your guest the date of your wedding and let them know an invitation is on its way.

Postage Problems

With invitations, response cards, direction cards and reception cards, your assembled wedding invitation will be heavy in its envelope and will take more than a standard stamp to be processed through the U.S. Postal Service. In addition, invitations with an incorrect address will be returned to you.

If you experience either of these situations, you should call the intended recipient to explain. The recipient will likely be honored that you took the time to personally call to invite them to your wedding.

Preventing the Crisis: Assemble an invitation, complete with the response cards, direction cards and reception cards within the envelope and weigh it at the post office to determine the correct postage needed before mailing.

Before addressing your invitations, be sure call or email any guests who may have moved to verify their current address.

Not Enough Envelopes

As you address the envelopes for your invitations, you will make mistakes. Whether the lettering is imperfect or the ink smudges, you will take the next envelope in your stack and begin addressing the invitation again.

As a result, you may run out of envelopes before you run out of guests to invite. If you order only enough envelopes and invitations to cover the number of guests on your list, then you will need to go back to your invitation supplier to order additional envelopes. If your invitation designer is online, you will receive your envelopes quickly.

Preventing the Crisis: Always order one to two extra envelopes for every 10 wedding invitations to allow for any mistakes you may make when addressing them.

Forgetting to Include RSVP Date

Your invitations or response cards should clearly state the deadline for a response from your invited guests. This date is usually two to three weeks ahead of the wedding. Most people will have responded by this time.

But what if you forgot to put the RSVP date on the invitation or response card? Fear not. Many invited guests will automatically send you their response despite the lack of an RSVP date.

For those who have not responded, it is perfectly acceptable to call them and ask for a response to your wedding invitation.

Preventing this Crisis: Employ the services of an online wedding stationery printer that will guide you through the process of creating your invitation. These sites often use tools that prompt you to enter the content you need to include on your invitation. This will prevent you from forgetting to include important details.

Thorough planning helps you avoid these common wedding invitation problems. However, if you cannot prevent the crisis, you can at least manage it appropriately to ensure as many guests as possible will be present to celebrate your wedding day with you.