Invitation addressing wording

Starmusica

Ok... so I tend to get annoyed when people refer to women as Mrs. (husbands first name) (husbands last name).. that said.. I can be a crazy feminist weirdo sometimes. So I respect that a lot of people don't see anything wrong with that...

that said- is the proper way to address an invite to Mr. H XYZ and Mrs. W XYZ- "Mr. and Mrs. H XYZ"? So by the husbands first and last name?

AND then on the inner envelope- is it Mr. and Mrs. or just first names so its more casual?!

hope that all made sense

JBs_Bride

The outer should technically be Mr. and Mrs. Robert Smith. it's not progressive, but it's traditional. The inner would be Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

http://www.somewhereintimecalligraphy.com/envelope-addressing-etiquette.html

LexiMS

agree with JBs--I personally don't have an issue with the mr and mrs husbands name, but I know some of my parents hippy friends do, so I just did theirs "husband and wife last name" less formal, but didnt want to irritate anyone!

Starmusica

Yea.. I started cleaning up the list to send to the woman doing my invitations.. I went the traditional route except for the few women who get their own last name.

I honestly don't know why it bothers me.. I am taking my FH's last name and I'm excited about it sometimes. I guess I am just mildly insane :-P

ebigelow

I would hope that no one would get irritated with you personally for addressing them that way...I think most people understand the etiquette even if they don't agree with it... good luck!

sboston06

I know it's not totally correct but I"m addressing the invitations to Mr. and Mrs. John and Mary Smith.  If it's a single (widowed) woman, I am writing Mrs. Mary Smith.

But I'm also not doing inner envelopes and I honestly don't think anyone will be "offended" by this.  Many probably won't even notice.

cb0t

My fiance and I struggled with this a bit, especially in the situations where we didn't know if the woman went by her own last name.  But then we decided to just go with the standard "Mr. and Mrs. [Husband's Name]" because we figured no one could fault us for being traditional.

However, we did slack off a bit when it came to people our own age and ended up addressing a lot of them to, say, "Bill and Sally" or "The Smith Family."  I don't know that younger people really care about the formality.

   - Colleen

jkepros

We wrote out each person's name, as in:

Mrs. Jane Doe &
Mr. John Doe
Address...

There were 2 instances we didn't know the spouse's name (or I should say, how to spell it!), only that the guest was married.  For those 2 we did:

Mr. and Mrs. John Doe
Address...