Wedding and christening invitation wording — 27 examples

Two guests of honour on one page

Wedding and christening invitation wording is the only kind that has to introduce two guests of honour at once — a couple and a child — and still send everybody to one place at one hour. It either does that in the first four lines or it does not do it at all. Guests skim. A page that reads like two invitations pasted end to end buys you a fortnight of messages asking which bit they are actually coming to.

The decision that fixes most of it is order, and there are two orders in play. The first is the order of the day, which is a fact: whatever happens first goes first, and it stays in that order everywhere on the page. The second is the order of mention, which is a choice — whose name carries the headline. Most couples put the marriage at the top, because that is what people are travelling for and buying an outfit for, and let the child arrive in the second sentence. Reverse it when the christening is the bigger gathering: when the marriage is a register-office morning with two witnesses and the church at midday is where fifty people will be standing.

Whichever you pick, commit to it. If the wedding leads the opening, it leads the running order, the reply line and the message you paste into WhatsApp. Readers build a picture from the first thing they see, and every later contradiction costs you an answer you have to write by hand.

Opening lines that carry both

An opening has three jobs here: name the couple, name the child, and say the same day before the reader has to work it out. Below, the same announcement in six registers. Read them for shape rather than for the names.

The formal version, for printed-feeling wording and for older relatives who expect an invitation to sound like one:

Sarah Whitfield and Tom Rennie
invite you to their marriage
and to the christening of their daughter, Ada,
on Saturday 12 September 2026.

The warm version, which is the one most people actually want. It says the whole thing in two lines and gets out of the way:

We are getting married, and Ada is being christened.
Same Saturday, same church, same people we love.
Sarah and Tom

The short version, for a save-the-date or the first line of the message you send with the link:

One Saturday. Two promises.
Sarah and Tom are marrying; Ada is being christened.
12 September 2026.

The playful version. It works because it names the thing everyone is too polite to mention, and it only works if that is genuinely how you talk:

We did all of this slightly out of order.
On 12 September 2026 we are putting it right — a wedding, a christening,
and a lunch that will go on far too long. Come.

The religious version, for a service where both the vows and the baptism happen at the same altar:

By the grace of God, on 12 September 2026,
we will make our marriage vows and bring our son Noah to be baptised.
We would be glad of your prayers and your company.
Hannah and Michael

And the version where the child leads, for the case described above — the marriage is small and private, the baptism is the gathering:

Noah is being christened.
His mum and dad are getting married the same morning, quietly.
Come for both — Saturday 6 June 2026.

Naming your child beside you

The child's name is the line guests reread, so give it room and give it an age. Their daughter, Ada is correct and slightly cold on its own; Ada, who is eighteen months old is the same sentence with a picture attached, and it tells a guest with a toddler that they are not the only ones bringing one.

If your child is old enough to have a job on the day — carrying rings, holding flowers, walking ahead — say it in the invitation rather than saving it as a surprise. It is the single detail that makes people smile at a page, and it quietly tells guests the day is child-friendly without you writing the words child-friendly.

Sarah and Tom Whitfield
— and Ada, who is eighteen months old and firmly in charge —
would love you at their wedding and at her christening
on Saturday 12 September 2026.

We marry at eleven and have Isla baptised at half past twelve,
in the same church, in front of the same faces.
Emily and James

When there is more than one child, or children from more than one household, name each of them and let the sentence do the joining. Do not explain the arrangement on the invitation; nobody needs the history, and an invitation is a bad place to give it.

James and Emily are getting married.
Freya and Theo are being christened.
On 6 June 2026 the four of us become one family, out loud.

Wording the two ceremonies separately

Each ceremony gets its own block with its own hour and address, even when they are twenty minutes apart in the same building. Guests scan for a time and a postcode; a paragraph that holds both events at once forces them to read it twice.

The marriage

The marriage service
Saturday 12 September 2026, eleven o'clock
St Bride's, Fleet Street, London
Please be in your seats by a quarter to.

We sign the register at ten, at the town hall,
with our parents and the two friends who agreed to witness it.
Everything after that belongs to everybody.

The christening

If the baptism sits inside the wedding service rather than after it, say so plainly — it changes when people arrive and whether they can slip out.

The christening
Saturday 12 September 2026, half past twelve
The same church, straight after the marriage service
Ada will be baptised by the Revd Alice Moore.

There is one service, not two.
We make our vows at eleven; Noah is baptised at the font in the same service,
before we sign the register.

Ada will be baptised at the half-twelve service, in the church
where we are married an hour earlier.
Her godparents are Rachel Doyle and Sam Ferris.

The celebration afterwards

Lunch, and the rest of it
Half past one until midnight, The Coach House, Ashford
One long table, a cake with two tiers,
and a quiet room upstairs for anyone under five.

The celebration
From two o'clock at Ballyhaunis House.
Lunch at three, speeches before the cake, dancing once the plates are cleared.

The timetable, written as one day

A combined invitation lives or dies on its running order. Write every hour of the day in a single list, in sequence, with no gaps you have not explained — a guest who sees eleven o'clock and then half past one will assume they are meant to be somewhere in between and will ring you to find out.

Give each line an hour, a verb and a place. Round the times you can round and be exact about the two you cannot: the hour the doors are shut for the service, and the hour the meal is served. If there is a gap for photographs, name it as a gap and say where people can wait; that one line prevents an entire category of question.

The day, in order
10.45 — please be seated
11.00 — the marriage service
12.30 — Ada's christening, in the same church
13.00 — photographs in the churchyard; the pub next door is open
13.30 — lunch at The Coach House
16.00 — cake and speeches
19.00 — dancing

Church at eleven. Font at half past twelve. Lunch at one.
Nothing to bring but yourselves.

Wedding and christening invitation wording for guests invited to one part

This is the hard part, and it is hard for a reason: everything you write here is read as a ranking. The fix is not vagueness. It is to write the smaller invitation as its own specific welcome, with its own hour and its own reason, rather than as the big one with pieces removed.

Four cases cover almost everyone. Some guests are invited to all of it. Some come to the church for the vows and the baptism and go home before lunch. Some are evening guests only. And some are there for the christening — the godparents' families, the neighbours who have held the baby, the people who would find a wedding breakfast strange but would not miss the font.

Church and christening, no meal:

We would love you with us in church at eleven,
for the vows and then for Ada's baptism.
Lunch afterwards is a small one, family and godparents only,
so we will find you at the church door and keep you a while.

Evening only, written so it sounds like the better half of the day, which it usually is:

The daytime is a short, family-sized thing.
The evening is not: from half past seven at The Coach House,
with a band, a bar and an unreasonable amount of cake. Come to that.

Christening only:

Noah is being christened at half past twelve on 6 June 2026,
at St Anne's, and we would love you there.
We marry earlier the same morning with just our parents,
so come for the font, and stay for lunch.

And the whole day, said out loud, because the guests who are invited to everything also need telling:

You are invited to all of it:
the service, the christening, the lunch and the dancing after.
Wear shoes you can stand up in.

Send one link, not three edited copies of the same page. Two guests standing together will compare what they were sent within about a minute of arriving, and a page that says different things to different people is the version of this problem that does not get forgiven. One page, one running order, one honest line each about which parts you are expected at.

The names that belong on the page, and the ones that do not

An invitation like this has room for parents and for godparents, and the two do different work. Parents go in when they are hosting or when your families expect it; the phrase together with our parents covers a couple paying for their own day while still naming them. A parent who has died is usually written into the same line rather than left out of it.

Together with our parents,
Anne and David Whitfield,
Marie Rennie and the late Peter Rennie,
we invite you to our marriage and to Ada's christening.

The godparents are the one set of names guests genuinely want printed, because they have a job in front of everybody and half the room will be trying to work out who they are. Name them near the christening, not in the opening.

Ada's godparents, Rachel Doyle and Sam Ferris,
will stand with her at the font, and with us for the rest of the day.

Your best man and maid of honour, by contrast, almost never appear on an invitation in the UK or Ireland. They are announced by the seating and the speeches. Leaving them off is not a slight, and adding them tends to make the page look like a programme.

Closing lines, and the one ask that saves you a week

Close with the ask, not with a flourish. A combined day needs one answer covering both parts, a head count per household, and a menu choice — because the caterer will ask for those totals about a week out and will not accept "roughly ninety". If children are eating, the children's count is a separate number and you need it in writing, not remembered from a conversation at a school gate.

Please answer by 1 August 2026, from the link — one tap covers the whole day.
Tell us how many of you are coming, what you cannot eat,
and whether anyone at your table is under twelve.
Sarah and Tom

No gifts, please — you are travelling for two celebrations already.
If you would like to mark Ada's christening,
her godparents are collecting for the church roof.

There is no dress code beyond the weather.
The church is cold and the garden is grass.
Ada will be in white; the rest of us are improvising.

This is where the format earns its keep. Because the invitation is a web page with its own link, the reply is a button on that page rather than an address at the bottom: the guest says whether they are coming, for how many, which menu they want — meat-free, gluten-free and the children's menu included — and can write down an allergy or a message. The answers land in one list with the totals already added up, which for a day with two sittings is the difference between one number and a spreadsheet you maintain by hand. If you want the wording of that step itself, there is a separate piece on how to word the reply request.

The other thing a link buys you is the correction. Church times move, and on a combined day a service that shifts by twenty minutes moves everything after it. You edit the page once and the same link shows the new running order to everybody, including the people who opened it in March. Nobody gets a follow-up message contradicting a card they have already stuck to the fridge.

Before you send it

1. Read the page as somebody who has never met your child. Does it say the child's name, and does it say the same day, in the first four lines.
2. Check that the running order appears once, in one direction, and that nothing later in the page contradicts it.
3. Give every address a postcode. Two venues on one day means two sets of parking, and the second one is the one people get wrong.
4. Decide the four guest groups before you write a word: whole day, church only, evening only, christening only. Write one line for each, then check that no line reads as an apology.
5. Set the reply date at least three weeks before the caterer's deadline, and put the date in the sentence rather than in a footnote.
6. Send it earlier than you would send a wedding invitation on its own. People are being asked to hold a whole day with two dress registers in it, and if you want the reasoning there is a piece on how far ahead invitations should go out.
7. Open it on a phone before anybody else does. That is where it will be read, in a queue, once.

If you are still choosing the page the words will sit on, the designs built for a wedding and a christening on the same day are the ones that carry two ceremonies without splitting into two pages, and every text field arrives with ten written options you can keep or replace. If only one of the two events is yours to write, the wording for each on its own is set out in the wedding piece and in the christening piece. And once the answers are in, the count you have collected is the same count that builds the table plan — which, on a day with a toddler and two families in the room, is worth starting early.