We have been a little behind on posting for our blog last week. But we promise we are back this week! And with a great tip for all of you getting ready to send out your invitations. We get asked all the time about addressing envelopes and what is the best way to do it. We compiled some of our tips, industry tips and etiquette tips and also provided a great download for you!

Now that your invitations are designed and off to print, how do you handle your addressing of the envelopes? Addressing, stuffing, and posting these envelopes takes planning and attention to detail. It isn’t easy to organize that many addresses and figure out how to address everyone. The easiest tip we can share is, start early. When you are sitting down to figure out your guest list, start an excel sheet that contains fields for your guests professional titles (if any) or salutation, first name, last name and the address. You should also have a field for out of country guests too, so you know how much to calculate for postage. And a field for children. This will help you for an at a glance list so you know who is coming from where, how many, and how many children. This excel sheet can be as complex or as simple as you need it. But the base is the most important, so when it is time to address your envelopes you are able to do this efficiently and easily.

This excel sheet will keep you on task and help keep you organized when the time comes to address all those beautiful invitations. SO how exactly does one go about addressing those invites. Well we will break it down to a few simple pointers.

First: Social and Professional titles along with Salutations. For formal invitations, name should always be fully written out, not initials or nicknames. Married couples should be addressed as Mr. and Mrs. so and so. Okay, so here is where it gets a little tricky, professional titles. This is always something that you need to pay very close attention to, they worked hard for these titles and in a formal situation they need to be addressed by them.  If the wife is a doctor, her full name would come first, as in “Doctor Jane Miller and Mr. Joe Miller.” If the husband is a doctor, the titles will appear as “Doctor and Mrs.” If both are doctors, write “The Doctors Miller.” I know it sounds strange, but this is how etiquette calls for it. If they have different professional titles, list the wife first: “Doctor Jane Miller and The Honorable Joe Miller.”  Then we get the questions of what if the wife has kept her maiden name? Well her name should appear first and be joined with her husband’s using “and.” Ampersands (&) are perfectly acceptable as well… at least in my book!

Second: The physical street address. If the title is formal the street addressing should be as well. No abbreviations. St. should be spelled out to Street, along with Ave. spelled out to Avenue, and so forth. P.O. Box should be fully spelled out to Post Office Box, along with Apt. should be Apartment. This also applies to states as well. Washington D.C. will become Washington, District of Columbia or Columbia, MD will become Columbia, Maryland. There is also a strange rule that states that house numbers under twenty should be speled out. I always say it is up to the individual. There are some rules you should follow to the T but there are others that have wiggle room.

Three: Return addressing. The preferred location for this has been the back flap of the envelope, but with brides getting more and more creative with their invitations, you can place it anywhere that the post office can read it clearly, and above the quarter mark of the envelope. Blind embossing is still available, although the United States Postal Service discourages it, as it is difficult to read. I have never had a couple complain about it and I use it on a lot of my personal correspondence.  The post office has a lot of rules and regulations when mailing a letter, so make sure you check with your local post master to make sure your invitations will make it to their final destination. Today, most couples have the return address printed in the same method as their invitations. The envelope is the first glimpse of your wedding invitations, think about the creativity that you can place on this.

Four: The outside envelope. Personally,I feel like this is a little out of date. The original thinking behind the outer envelope was to keep the inner envelope clean while traveling pony express… long gone are those days… Martha Stewart is frowning at me right now. It isn’t necessary to have both envelopes, but many couples still like to use this for the formality of it. Just make sure when address the weight of paper you have your designer, or you, take the envelopes to the post office to be weighed for the extra postage that will be needed to send your invitations. The outer envelope always adds an extra postage cost, due to the fact of the extra paper weight and the size, typically it is a A9 envelop and they are larger than the standard envelope.

We have a great little guide for you to download off of our site to help with all your invitation addressing needs.

{Photo credit: The beautifully talented Lori Raines Calligraphy Studio}