We've already ordered our wedding invitations - they're safely tucked away in a corner until it's time to address and mail them - but we had quite a time figuring out the best way to phrase "Hey! Come on down to our hootenanny and watch us get hitched!" without resorting to some version of "Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Solomon wish to happily announce that their spinster daughter, who's been living in the spare room under the stairs, has finally found someone who'll agree to be seen with her in public twice a year." Then there's the hoopla of having stepparents* and how to incorporate them into the invitation; the list goes on. Generally speaking, even in this day and age, most wedding advice presumes that the bride's parents are paying for the majority of the wedding, and as such tend to recommend the traditional phraseology of the parents announcing the wedding. Since we're paying for the wedding ourselves (although my parents are kindly contributing to the rehearsal dinner, and Ed's parents also making a contribution), we omitted our parents from the invitation altogether. We really spent a lot of time figuring it out, though. I'm sure none of our guests will be paying attention to the specific wording of the invitations.
I've learned largely to ignore advice from folks like the well-intentioned Miss Manners, who generally offers good advice, but if I were to have listened to her wedding advice, I'm sure I would have concluded that Ed and I were doing everything wrong. (At least, including RSVPs with text on them in definitely wrong, according to the venerable Ms. Martin, but I digress.) I was, however, happy to read her column today - specifically the third letter - which validates our phraseology as well.
* There is, of course, nothing necessarily wrong with having stepparents. Ed and I have been lucky that his parents are still married to each other, as are mine, so it's one less headache.
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