Traditional Wedding Invitations

For small, informal weddings, simply printing or handwriting invitations, or even just telephoning is fine. For the semi-formal, or formal weddings, you are usually expected to send the traditional invitations.

This usually means your invitations will consist of the double sheet of heavy white or ivory paper engraved or thermographed on the first page. Of course, there's also the alternative of handwritten calligraphy or computerized printing which may be more acceptable to you.

It seems that traditionally almost every word except for a few titles in names (Mr., Mrs.), etc. are written out in full. The street address is also spelled out unless the number is too large, then the arabic numerals are acceptable. The more formal British spellings for "honor" and "favor" are used, thus they are "honour" and "favour" in invitations. Punctuations are omitted except for commas in the date, and periods in abbreviations. The time is written out using "o'clock" and "half past" or "half after" the hour.

The only capitalization are in the proper nouns of names, titles, places, day and month. For traditional reasons, the title 'Doctor' is written out instead of abbreviated like Mr. unless the name following the title is very long. Junior can be written in full, but preceded by a comma and in the lower case (", junior"), not capitalized as in other titles. Military titles may be abbreviated as in Lt. Commander instead of Lieutenant Commander, and Capt. instead of Captain.