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High Mountain Weddings

Wedding Etiquette 101: Engagement Party Invitations

Engagement parties can be a great deal of fun and a great way to introduce your family to your future spouse’s family.  After all, a wedding really is the combining of whole families, not just of two people.  So, this is a great time to have everyone get to know each other before your big day.  It’s also a wonderful way to celebrate a momentous time in your life.  There is, though, one big thing to keep in mind as you create your engagement party guest list – those you invite now will be invitees later.

When you invite a person to your engagement party you are, in essence, inviting them to join you on the journey from engagement through marriage.  That means that all of those on your guest list today should absolutely be on your list for the wedding day as well.  There are exceptions, of course, but wedding etiquette does stipulate that you not leave any of these folks off of the guest list for the big day unless there are major extenuating circumstances that prevent it.

What does that mean for you now?  You would be well advised to carefully consider the guest list for this reason.  Keeping it to a small, intimate gathering is probably best, as this can greatly reduce the complications to be faced later when you realize that you can’t invite everyone that you want to invite to your wedding and fit them in the desired venue.  The more intimate the party, the fewer feelings you will hurt too.

After you’ve written out the invites and sent them, put the guest list in a safe place.  Even if you haven’t started the Wedding Planning process, it is a good idea to start a binder and have the engagement party guest list be the first entry.  Why?  For many couples, there are many months or even years between the engagement party and the actual wedding.  You are likely to forget exactly who came to the engagement party, unless it was an extremely small affair.  You don’t want to unintentionally leave someone off of the wedding guest list.  Besides which, this list (complete with mailing addresses) can serve as the start of the bigger wedding guest list, which means a little less stress for you later.

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