My real name is Michelle Jennifer, but i grew up going by jennifer and then when i was 20-ish my friends started calling me Rainbo. My fiance’s parents don’t feel comfortable with the Rainbo thing, so they call me Michelle. So when sending out invites, do I do three separate designs, one for each name? If i just go with what most people call me, there will be a whole slew of peeps on my fiance’s side that won’t have a clue who that person is.

Dude, just include all of your names on the invitation, ie Michelle Jennifer “Rainbo” Smith. Or whatever your last name is. Easy! …Next!

Right now, the issue that I’ve stumbled upon is invitation wording. The wedding is being hosted by the groom and I, and it would be completely unlike us to just include the traditional “First-name Middle-name Last-name and First-name Middle-name Last-name request the pleasure of your blah blah blah” Please help! —Lisette

Ooh, if you think using your full names is traditional, I hate to think what you’d think of ye olde “Mr. and Mrs. Smith invite you to join them in a celebration of love as their daughter, Bride, is united in marriage to Mr. Groom, son of Mr. and Mrs. Brown.” Bleah!

Wedding invitation wording really just comes down to who’s paying. This page is a veritable “choose your own adventure” of traditional/formal wording, depending on who’s paying. It’s very complicated (what do you do about step-parents? What if your sibling is chipping in?) and (yawn!) oh so stiff and dull.

Dull as these traditions may be, however, my only regret from our invitations (which we wrote from scratch — they’re in my book — complete with my embarrassing invite typo) is that we completely ignored the whole “if your parents are helping, include their names on the invite” rule of thumb. (We split the cost of our $6000 wedding three ways: us, his dad, my dad.)

That in mind, I’ve got a few suggestions for you …

Read the rest of this entry »