image courtesy SXC
When I told Liz that I would be writing a blog entry about same-sex wedding invitation wording, she wrinkled her nose. “What do you mean? Is it any different from a heterosexual invitation?”
In her defense, I had been poking at invitations longer than she had. And to date she’d been looking at colors, designs, paper and costs. She had yet to start fiddling with some of the websites that let you customize the wording. In fact, I’m not even sure she’d read the wording on any of the invitations she’d considered.
I pulled up a website I had frequented and showed her an example: “Mr. & Mrs. So-and-So request your presence at the marriage of their daughter First Middle to Mr. First Middle Last.” She sighed and nodded. “Oh, right, I’ve seen that.” The site I used for my example lets you customize, but the selections are:
- Both Parents Hosting
- Bride’s Parents Hosting
- Couple Hosting
- Couple with Parents Hosting
- Groom’s Parents Hosting
Well, we’re “one bride’s parents hosting with the other bride’s parent helping out here and there,” quite frankly. And to make things a bit more confusing, my step-dad and I don’t have the same last name. So, what are we doing? Finding a company that let’s you truly customize your invitation wording or that doesn’t assume all marriages are one man and one woman, for one thing. And then we are using something to the effect of:
Jan (Lastname1) & Winnie and Bruce (Lastname2)invite you to the wedding of their daughters Elizabeth Aline (Lastname2) and Michelle Raven (Lastname3) Saturday, the twentyfifth of September Two thousand and ten at four o’clock in the afternoon
Now if we can just find that perfect “birds in a tree” themed invitation, letterpressed in cornflower blue and sage green with chocolate brown wording….
