Wedding Invitation Etiquette Toronto Covid Edition

Happy Friday!

How’s your Wedding Sparkle? We hope the last blog post has been helping to get you back into the groove of planning!

Many couples are unsure of what they should do in terms of invitations and etiquette when inviting their guests amid these unprecedented times. We would love to provide you with this information below to keep you informed & help you to keep pushing forward in your planning.

Recommended Invitation Timeline:

Typically, your invitations are sent out 3 months prior to your wedding date, with your RSVP date set at the 4-6 week mark. With constant changes surrounding events and their gathering limits, you want to ensure to give your guests enough time to respond to their invitation, while also allowing enough time for you to receive all your RSVPs in a timely manner. 

For the reasons above, we now recommend that you send out your invitations 2 months before, and push the RSVP deadline date to 3 weeks prior to your wedding or shower. Additionally, we also highly recommend you have guests RSVP online via email or through your wedding website, in order to speed up response times (as opposed to opting for your guests to send their responses back by mail).

Who Gets an Invitation to Your Pre-Wedding Events?

If you are having a Bridal Shower and/or any other additional pre-wedding events, the proper etiquette is to extend an invitation to your shower to those who are also being invited to your wedding. Due to gathering restrictions that are currently in place (and fluctuating) Canada-wide, some couples are wondering if proper etiquette would permit them to invite certain people to their shower only, in order to allow them to celebrate with as many of their loved ones as possible.

We understand the sentiment behind these thoughts and therefore recommend that you start by inviting all of your wedding guests to your shower first, and should you have a bit more flexibility with your guest count, you can then extend an invitation to some additional loved ones that you weren’t able to invite to your wedding due to provincial gathering restrictions. 

You can also opt to have two separate events, in order to celebrate with more of your guests, but keep in mind that this option will have a significant price increase associated with it. 

Wedding Invitation Details:

Your Wedding Invitations should be as informative as possible, especially during these times. It is for this reason that we recommend adding an additional details card to your invitation suite that will focus on COVID-19 regulations and information.

Your COVID-19 details card should include the following:

• A Personal Message from both of you to your guests
• COVID-19 Regulations and Precautions your guests should be made aware of
• Timeline for notifying your guests of any changes
  • When can they expect to be notified & how?

Your wedding invitation suite itself should also include your Wedding Website link & access details (for example, the password required to enter). You will need to make sure to complete your wedding website prior to sending out your invitations – more information on how to do this can be found in our next blog, so stay tuned!

In regards to those guests you would have loved to invite, but no longer can:

A sentimental option to consider is to send out a Wedding Announcement (in lieu of an invitation) to those who you would have loved to invite to your wedding, but simply can not due to gathering restrictions. You’ll want to include a personal message to them, letting them know how important they are to you and that their presence will be missed. Be sure to only include your wedding date – do not also include any information on your ceremony location and venue, as to avoid confusion with your guests. You can also opt to make a donation to a charity in their honour, or even send out a guest favour with the Wedding Announcement to let them know how much you care. 

We wish you the best on your planning journey.

For Bookings & Inquiries contact us at hello@dianapires.com

Creatively Yours,

The DPE Team