Information cards

Depending on where your wedding is being held, how far your guests may have to travel to get there and any other plans which you feel need to be imparted, an additional card or information sheet can be included with the wedding invitation, or perhaps these details can be printed on the back of the invitation. This is very much a personal decision.   Many couples will choose to email or call their guests to tell them these arrangements, or perhaps put together a wedding website instead.

You may wish to consider the following and decide whether or not you want to give specific instructions to your guests on a separate card which matches the rest of your stationery.

• Directions to the ceremony/reception (especially if your guests may not be familiar with the venues or the locations); sometimes a mud map is printed on these cards as well as actual directions and some alternative means of arriving at the destination. Especially useful for out-of-town weddings.
• Transport arrangements – sometimes the couple will organise a bus between the ceremony and reception, or charter a boat for the reception - relatively common on beautiful Sydney Harbour! – in which case you will need to give guests a specific time and place for pick-up/departure.
• Parking suggestions – even if your wedding is in a well-known location, it is often helpful to give advice about parking.  You can do a little research and let people know a couple of alternatives, with prices of car parks where applicable, so that your guests will know all the costs upfront and will have peace of mind about leaving their vehicles in a safe spot for the duration of the festivities. You can also advise about metered and restricted zones so that your guests will avoid getting a ticket, which would really spoil the day for them!
• Phone numbers for local taxi services are often appreciated.
• Accommodation suggestions for guests who wish to stay overnight. In many cases you can simply provide websites and phone numbers of different types of accommodation such as hotels or guest houses, but of course you may organise special discounted rates at particular hotels and these would be your recommendations.
• Notes about children being invited to the reception (or not) – a line or two can be added to the information card to advise the arrangements.  You can also suggest numbers for babysitting services.
• Information about “things to see and do” in the area – whether your wedding is out of town, or you have invited people from far and wide who may not have visited the area before.

All of these things are optional – but for those of you who want everything to run as smoothly as possible, take the time to run through this checklist and decide if you would like to include any of these ideas and details.  It is very considerate to tell your invitees as much as you can about the arrangements and you can be sure they will appreciate your attention to detail.

Registry and Wishing Well cards

As well as the invitation itself and the RSVP card, other accessory cards are often included. In this article we are going to look at cards which deal with gift suggestions.

Whether with a bridal registry card or wishing well card, couples want their guests to know the best and perhaps easiest way to give a gift.  If you have set up a gift registry, a small card will often be provided with your occasion ID on it.

An alternative to a gift registry is a “Honeymoon registry” in which a travel agency will be nominated to organise a honeymoon fund.  The card presents details of the person to contact at the travel agency and this is a simple way for the guests to make a monetary contribution to the couple’s honeymoon, rather than giving cash or a traditional gift.

Wishing Well cards

In some cases, the couple will have a “Wishing Well” or something similar. This is very popular with couples who already have most of the household items they need. A Wishing Well card lets the guests know that there will be somewhere at the reception where they can place an envelope with money inside, in lieu of a gift-wrapped present.

Although couples often worry about wording this correctly, guests are almost always happy to comply with the request – it makes life easy and they know that their financial contribution is welcomed gratefully.  The wording can be in the form of a little poem (just Google “Wishing Well wording” to see the variety), but some of these are rather contrived! It is advisable to suggest that if a guest prefers to give a traditional gift, it will be welcomed – in this way, you are making everyone comfortable with their choice and method of gift giving.

We have put together some suggestions of Wishing Well wording in a free package, with templates and other wording suggestions for many of the items you will need in the course of your wedding preparations – details to be released soon…

RSVP cards

Although some people will be happy to put their RSVP details at the bottom of the invitation, others prefer to include either a separate little reply card in its own envelope with the return address printed on it or a “postcard”-style, with the return address printed on the back.  The aim is simply to make it as easy as possible for your guests to let you know if they will be coming!

These cards will usually have a place for the guests to write their names (you need to know whose response it is!), boxes to tick whether they will be able to attend and often a line to write any special dietary requirements, something that many caterers request you find out in advance.

RSVP cards can also sometimes be customised with an extra box, for example if a bus transfer is required, or there is an additional event being hosted, such as a brunch the following day. Keep the instruction brief and don’t worry about giving all the information – this card will be coming back to you.

Something that is becoming increasingly popular is to provide the RSVP card with an extra line of text, giving an email address as an alternative way to respond.  Given that email is such a quick, easy and convenient method of communication, this is helpful to both your guests and to the person responsible for collecting the information.