When you and your partner decide to get married you will suddenly have a lot of announcements and invitations to send out. You will need wedding cards to announce your engagement, to invite people to a celebration party, possibly to provide information and invitations to a bucks party or hens night, to get people to save the date, and of course to formally invite people to the ceremony and reception.
Most people who get married will go through the same process, including your family members and friends. Many of them will be sending out very similar looking notifications and invites – so how do you make your wedding cards stand out?
Use a different type of material
If you really want to stand out from the crowd then you can send out an invitation on something other than paper and cardboard. Getting the message you want etched, sandblasted or burnt into wood or glass, for example, then your notifications will be extra memorable. You could even get laser cutting to create a plastic board with your invitation.
It’s also becoming common to send out marriage invitations as fridge magnets. This not only means that people can display the invite prominently; they will also get a reminder whenever they go to get a snack!
If you are getting married at a busy time of the year then something like this where the wedding cards can be kept somewhere visible can help people to remember to keep the day free. After all, while your nuptials are the most important thing in the world to you, some of your guests might need some reminders.
Tell a story on your wedding cards
You can use your save the date or ceremony invitation to tell a cute story about how you and your fiancée met, or about the story of your relationship. This can be done in all kinds of ways, and you can get really creative with it!
A quite common method is to tell a short story about the story of you. You could potentially co-opt a well-known fairy tale and put your own names in as well, and even make a story book (a picture book preferably) with photos of key moments for the two of you if you want to be really cute.
You could also use a kind of storyboard on your wedding cards, with illustrations of the path you have taken together and captions explaining what has happened. This is a particularly good option if you combine it with using an unusual material, such as a fridge magnet or etching.
The story doesn’t have to be told in a linear fashion either! You could simply have a poem about how much you love each other, or your favourite song lyrics (musical wedding cards might be a bit tacky though). If you are religious then Bible verses (or your choice of holy book) can also be a good way to tell a story that is meaningful to you.
Make it quirky
Of course you will put a lot less time and money into designing announcements and party notifications than your main invitation, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make these wedding cards fun! Engagement party letters can feature cute photos of the proposal, and tell the story of how the moment happened. If you decide to send out announcements after the ceremony then you can talk about the nuptials. Hens and bucks party invites could possibly include some props for the night, or have some lewd decorations.
At the end of the day you want your wedding cards to be personal. Everyone sends out the same kinds of notices about their marriage, so your main chance to customize this aspect of the process is in changing the materials and messages you put on your announcements and invitations.