Wedding invitation wording — 26 examples you can copy

The seven parts an invitation is made of

Wedding invitation wording gets easier the moment you stop treating it as one piece of writing. An invitation is a sequence of short answers, asked in a fixed order: who is inviting, what they are asking you to come to, where the ceremony is and at what hour, where the party is and at what hour, what to wear, and how to reply. Write the answers one at a time and the page assembles itself.

The wedding designs here are built in seven sections, and they are the same seven a printed card has to squeeze onto one side of card stock:

• the intro — your names, the date, and the first sentence anybody reads
• the parents — named in full, or left off entirely
• the people standing with you — the section the designs file under godparents, which is where a best man and a maid of honour go if you name them at all
• the civil ceremony — the register office, or the licensed room at the venue
• the religious ceremony — the church, the synagogue, the temple
• the reception — the meal, the speeches, the dancing
• the closing — the last line, the signature, and the reply

Any of them can be switched off. A couple marrying in a hotel with no service turns the religious section off and the page closes up around the gap; a couple who married quietly in June and are throwing the party in September turns the ceremony sections into a single line of explanation. What follows is written section by section, in that order, so you can take the block you need and leave the rest.

Who is hosting, and why the first line does the work

The host is whoever is named first. That is the entire convention, and it survives from a time when the bride's parents paid for the day and therefore issued the invitation in their own names. Most couples now host themselves, or share the cost three or four ways, and the honest version of that is to put your own names at the top.

The host line also sets the register for everything underneath it. Once you have written Mr and Mrs Charles Whitfield request the pleasure of your company, you have committed to titles, spelled-out dates and no contractions for the rest of the page. Once you have written Sarah and Tom are getting married, you have committed to something else entirely, and it is just as correct.

The traditional form, when the bride's parents host and there is a church service. Note that the bride is named without her surname, because it is her parents' surname already:

Mr and Mrs Charles Whitfield
request the honour of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter
Eleanor Grace
to
Mr Thomas James Bennett
Saturday, the twelfth of September
two thousand and twenty-six
at half past one in the afternoon
Saint Mary's Church, Bathwick

When both families are contributing and nobody wants to rank them, one line covers it:

Together with their families,
Eleanor Whitfield and Thomas Bennett
invite you to share in the joy of their wedding
on Saturday, 12 September 2026.

When you are paying for it yourselves and would rather sound like yourselves:

Sarah and Tom are getting married,
and they would very much like you there.
Saturday, 12 September 2026, in Bath.

A middle path that names the parents warmly without handing them the invitation:

With the blessing of our parents,
Anne and Michael Whitfield
and Deborah and Paul Bennett,
we invite you to our wedding.
Sarah and Tom

And the same information at its most relaxed, for a small wedding where everyone on the list already knows the story:

Two families, one long guest list
and a Saturday in September.
Sarah and Tom are getting married — come and watch.

The request line, and the two spellings that matter

There is one genuine rule underneath all the etiquette advice. Request the honour of your presence is used when the ceremony is in a house of worship; request the pleasure of your company is used everywhere else — a register office, a hotel, a barn, a garden. American convention keeps the British spelling of honour in that phrase alone, which is why you see it on invitations that spell everything else the American way.

Everything below that line is your choice. The formal stack, for a black-tie wedding with a service:

Mrs Anne Whitfield
requests the honour of your presence
at the marriage of her daughter
Eleanor Grace Whitfield
to Mr Thomas James Bennett
on Saturday, the twelfth of September, two thousand and twenty-six.

The warm version, which is what most couples actually want and are talked out of:

We would love to have you with us
on the day we get married.
Saturday, 12 September 2026
Eleanor and Thomas

The short version, for a group message or a save-the-date that has to survive a small screen:

Eleanor and Thomas are getting married on 12 September 2026.
Please come.

And the playful one, which works when the whole page is playful and reads badly when the rest is formal:

We have booked a room, a band and a very good cake.
The only thing still missing is you.
Eleanor and Thomas, 12 September 2026

Wedding invitation wording for the ceremony

This is the part guests read twice, so it carries the facts rather than the feeling: the name of the building, the street, the hour, and — if the doors are strict about it — the time to be seated.

A church wedding

The ceremony will be held at Saint Mary's Church, Bathwick,
on Saturday, 12 September 2026, at half past one.
Please be seated by twenty past.

If faith is the reason for the day rather than the setting for it, say so plainly; guests who share it will be glad, and guests who do not will still know what to expect:

We will make our promises to one another before God,
at Saint Mary's Church, Bathwick, at half past one,
and we would be grateful for your prayers and your company.

A register office or a civil ceremony

A civil ceremony is a different animal on the page. It is short, it starts on time, and the room is booked for a fixed slot with another couple behind you. Give an arrival time, not just a start time.

We will be married at Bath Register Office, 23 Queen Square,
on Friday, 11 September 2026, at eleven o'clock.
The ceremony lasts about twenty minutes,
so please arrive by twenty to eleven.

At a licensed venue the ceremony and the party share an address, and the wording can carry guests straight from one to the other:

Our ceremony takes place in the Orangery at Hartwell House
at three o'clock, followed by drinks on the lawn
and dinner at half past six.

Check the venue name and the hour against the booking confirmation, not against your memory of the phone call. A register office slot is a legal appointment with a queue behind it, and the notice you gave applies to the ceremony you named — the rules on giving notice are worth reading once before you print anything.

A civil ceremony now, a blessing later

Couples who married in a small ceremony and are celebrating months later need a sentence that explains the gap without apologising for it:

We were married quietly at Bath Register Office in June.
On Saturday, 12 September 2026 we are asking for a blessing
at Saint Mary's Church, Bathwick, and then feeding everyone we love.

If the register office is the whole event rather than a prelude, the wording changes shape again — that is its own page, and what a civil ceremony invitation has to say covers it.

The reception, the timings and the dress code

Two things confuse guests more than anything else on a wedding invitation: whether they are invited to all of it, and what happens between the ceremony and the meal. Both are fixed with plain sentences.

The formal reception line, when everyone on the list is there for the whole day:

Dinner and dancing will follow at Hartwell House,
Oxford Road, Aylesbury, from half past six until midnight.

An evening invitation is a British institution and needs to be worded so that nobody feels second-tier. Name the reason and make the evening sound like the good part, because it usually is:

We are keeping the ceremony small,
but the evening belongs to everybody.
Join us at The Old Brewery from eight o'clock
for a drink, a slice of cake, and as much dancing as you can manage.
Sarah and Tom

The warm version, for a wedding where the schedule is loose on purpose:

After the ceremony we will walk across to The Old Brewery,
where there is food from seven, a band from nine,
and no plan whatsoever for what happens after that.

Dress code belongs near the reception, not in the corner in italics. Formal:

Black tie, please — dinner jackets and long dresses.
The room is warm and the evening runs until one.

Relaxed, and specific enough to be useful:

Wear whatever makes you feel like celebrating.
The ceremony is on grass, so heels will sink.

Tell people about the gaps too. If there are three hours between the service and dinner, write the three hours down; guests plan childcare, trains and taxis around that line. And when the table plan goes up, the wording on it is the same problem in miniature — how to write a seating plan people can read picks that up.

The closing, the signature and the reply

The last block is short and does two jobs: it ends the page like a letter, and it tells people how to answer. Keep the sign-off in the same voice as the opening. A formal invitation that ends see you there!! has changed character three inches from the finish.

It would be an honour to have you with us on the day.
Eleanor and Thomas

The day will be good because of who is in the room.
We hope that includes you.
With love, Sarah and Tom

Bring comfortable shoes and a story about one of us.
See you in September — Sarah and Tom

Then the reply. On paper this used to be a card and a stamp; here the answer happens inside the invitation itself, which changes what you can reasonably ask for. A guest can say whether they are coming, for how many people, which menu they want — including the meat-free, gluten-free and children's options — and write down an allergy or a message, all in about a minute. That is why the deadline line can ask for more than yes or no:

Please let us know by 1 August 2026 whether you can come,
how many of you there will be,
and anything you would rather not eat.
It takes a minute, on the invitation itself.

Set the deadline four to six weeks before the day, and choose it backwards from the caterer rather than from the calendar: your venue will want final numbers and a count per menu option about a week before the wedding, and the weeks in between are what you spend on the people who have not answered. Those counts come straight out of the answers, so the date you write is the date that protects you. If you want the reply wording on its own, with chase messages for the people who never answer, the phrasing for RSVPs and reminders is a page of its own, and when to send wedding invitations works backwards from the same date.

Divorced, remarried, blended — how the host line changes

The etiquette here exists to prevent a fight, not to enforce a hierarchy, and every rule in it bends. Divorced parents hosting together are named on separate lines, in the order mother then father, with no and joining them — the missing conjunction is the whole signal:

Mrs Anne Whitfield
Mr Charles Whitfield
request the pleasure of your company
at the marriage of their daughter
Eleanor Grace
to Mr Thomas James Bennett

When a parent has remarried and the step-parent is part of the family rather than a footnote, name the couples as couples:

Anne and Robert Hargreaves,
together with Charles Whitfield,
invite you to the wedding of Eleanor and Thomas
on Saturday, 12 September 2026.

A parent who has died can be named without turning the invitation into a memorial. One clause is enough, and guests who knew them will feel it:

Sarah Whitfield, daughter of Anne Whitfield
and of the late Charles Whitfield,
will marry Thomas Bennett on 12 September 2026.
We would love you there.

If the arrangement is complicated enough that no formula fits — four parents, two step-parents, a grandmother who raised you — drop the host line entirely and issue the invitation in your own names. Nobody is offended by an invitation that names nobody; people are offended by an invitation that names everybody except them.

Formal, warm or playful — pick one and hold it

The most common fault in a wedding invitation is not a wrong phrase, it is three registers in one page: a stiff host line, a jokey reception paragraph, a sign-off borrowed from a greetings card. Choose the register from the guest who would notice most — usually the most formal person on the list — and let every section answer to it.

Two tests catch the mismatch before anyone else sees it. Read the whole page aloud in one go; the seam where the voice changes is audible even when it is invisible. Then read it as somebody who knows neither of you: a colleague's partner should be able to work out the date, both addresses, the arrival time and the dress code without asking a single question.

The wording does not have to start from a blank field. Every text on the page arrives already written, ten options for each one, ranging from the formal to the frankly silly, and you replace whichever ones do not sound like you. It is worth opening a design with your own names and dates before you finish the wording, because the design decides how much room a sentence has and how it will look at the width of a phone — a line that reads well in a document can break in an ugly place on the page it will actually live on.

One last thing that only holds because the invitation is a link rather than a card: the words are not final when you send them. If the ceremony hour moves, or the restaurant changes, or you notice a fortnight later that you spelled a surname wrong, you correct it once and every guest who opens the same link sees the corrected version. That is worth knowing while you write, because it takes the fear out of the sentence you are least sure about — and it means the deadline that matters is the one for replies, not the one for getting the wording perfect.