What to include in a wedding invitation
An invitation has to answer four things before anything else: who is marrying, when, where, and how to reply. Everything after that is comfort — useful, but secondary. Here is how to rank it, and where the invitation should stop.
The four details that are not optional
Both your names, the full date including the year, the town and the venue, and how to confirm. That is the floor: a guest with those four can hold the date and start planning. Include the year even for a near date — an invitation received in November for a wedding in June is genuinely ambiguous without it.
Separating the moments and the guests
This is the most common and most awkward mistake. If your day runs a ceremony, a dinner, a party and a brunch, and not every guest is invited to all of it, the invitation has to say so plainly. A guest arriving for dinner when they were expected at the party is a situation nobody wants to handle on the day. Phrase it positively: "We would love to see you for the evening, from 9pm" reads better than an implied exclusion.
The practical details that stop the questions
Dress code, parking, nearby accommodation, arriving by train or car, whether children are welcome, the gift question. None is essential to the announcement; all of them save you messages. On paper they end up as loose insert cards that get lost. In a digital invitation each becomes a section you consult when you need it — a guest looking for the venue address the night before knows where to look.
The RSVP: what to ask on the first pass
Attendance, obviously. But also whatever you will need for the caterer and the logistics and would hate to chase separately: the number of guests, allergies or dietary needs, the brunch, a lift. One question asked at the right moment is worth three follow-ups.
Tone: short, personal, and yours
The formal constructions inherited from official correspondence say nothing to anyone now. One sentence that sounds like you beats a paragraph of convention. "We said yes. All that is missing is you" works because it is direct and it sets the tone of the party. Write the sentence you would say to a friend on the phone, then cut it in half.
What not to put on it
Internal running order (when the photographer arrives), anything that will change (the weather, a shuttle number), and anything that belongs to a family negotiation. An invitation announces and invites; it does not arbitrate. Moving details belong in a digital invitation precisely because they can be corrected there without resending anything.
Worth knowing
Should the gift registry go on the invitation?
Convention is still to leave it off the invitation itself. In a digital invitation it can live in its own section, which a guest opens if they want to: available without being pushed, which settles a subject that is always slightly delicate.