When you have a blended family, it can be difficult to determine the correct wording for your wedding invitation. The standard wording doesn’t apply because your parents are likely not handling the wedding together, so you must play with different types of wording to send the correct message. While you don’t want to offend any members of your family, you should also realize that a wedding is much more about the bride and groom than about their blended families. The trick is to avoid over-complicated wedding invitation wording so that recipients aren’t confused.
Generally speaking, the names of the parents who are funding the wedding are the ones printed on the invitation. In the past, it was always the bride’s family, and divorce was not nearly as common as it is today. Wedding invitation wording gets complicated for blended families, especially when two or more sets of parents are cooperatively funding the wedding itself. The standard wording for a wedding invitation would read something like:
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Thompson request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Emily Jane to Mark David Rodriguez…
This standard wedding invitation wording implies that Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Thompson are the parents of the bride and are funding the wedding itself. But what if the bride’s parents are divorced and are funding the wedding together? Or what if the groom’s parents are also chipping in and are likewise divorced (and perhaps remarried)? This is where wedding invitation wording gets tricky for blended families.
Wedding Invitation Wording: When the Bride’s Parents are Divorced
If the bride’s parents are funding the wedding and are divorced, it is usually appropriate to say Ms. Kaitlyn Thompson and Mr. Lewis Thompson… This implies that they are acting separately but are still funding the wedding together. If you put their names together as Mr. and Mrs., it implies that they are still together and gives the wrong impression.
Wedding Invitation Wording: When The Bride’s Parents are Remarried
If the parents of the bride are remarried and everyone is chipping it, it gets a little more complicated. Generally speaking, you can simply add both names to the wedding invitation as Mr. and Mrs. and most people will understand the situation.
Wedding Invitation Wording: Bride’s Parent and New Spouse
Sometimes, just one of the bride’s parents and his or her new spouse will fund the wedding. In this case, it is important to distinguish that the bride is the daughter of either the father or the mother. In other words, you would say that Mr. and Mrs. Thompson request the honor of your presence at the marriage of Mrs. Thompson’s daughter… This shows that the parent and stepparent are funding the wedding together, but that the daughter is biologically related to Mrs. Thompson and not Mr. Thompson.
Wedding Invitation Wording: The Bride and Groom are Funding the Wedding
In some cases, the parents won’t be involved in the financial aspects of a wedding and the bride and groom will handle it on their own. In this case, the wedding invitation can read You are cordially invited to celebrate the wedding of… or Together with their parents… to indicate as much. This is increasingly common as people are waiting to be married until they are in their late twenties or early thirties.
