FAQ: How to Address Your Wedding Invitations

If you get your wedding invitations designed by Vivian Elle, you'll get your addresses printed. It's something I pretty much throw in as a courtesy and brides are usually surprised and delighted to hear it. Engagements are a busy time and not having to sit down one night and address 100+ envelopes is a valuable thing.

I send my brides a spreadsheet that they put their addresses in. As simple as it is to fill out name/address/city/state/zip, there are always some tricky addresses that come up. Or some brides are just wondering how to address their guests by name on their envelopes. So let me take a minute and answer that question for any of you inquiring brides-to-be out there.

Honestly, I know there's the super fancy traditional way of addressing a wedding envelope, but in my experience working with brides, they just want the basic Mr. and Mrs. _______ on the envelopes, so that's what I'm going to talk about in this post. If you want to get really fancy up in here, The Knot has this great article to help you.

**As far as the actual address, just make sure that you spell everything out. For example:

100 E. Main Street
Apt. 24
Chicago, IL 60608

should be

100 East Main Street
Apartment 24
Chicago, Illinois 60608

That's really all that needs to be said about that. Let's move on, shall we? Here are some quick links if you want to jump right to a section.

Quick Links

How to address an envelope to:
A Married Couple
A Married Couple - Different Last Names
An Unmarried Couple Living Together
Two Married Doctors
A Married Woman Doctor
Families with Children

Married Couple:

Mr. and Mrs. Blake Ostrovan

or

Blake and Sherry Ostrovan (this is for a more informal wedding)

Married Couple - Different Last Names:

Mr. James Walker and Mrs. Sarah Galm

An Unmarried Couple Living Together:

Mr. Jim Peterson
Ms. Theresa Wheelock


Two Married Doctors:

Doctors Gabriel and Julie Regner

or, if they have different last names:

Doctors Gabriel Regner and Julie Parker


To A Married Woman Doctor:

If she kept her maiden name:

Dr. Julie Parker and Mr. Gabriel Regner

If she took her husband's name:

Dr. Julie and Mr. Gabriel Regner

To Families With Children:

Because so many brides are forgoing an inner envelope (in fact, I haven't had one bride that has used one), I get asked about how to include kids' names a lot. Here's the easiest way to do it.

Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Dougherty
Jake, Audrey, and Kyle

I've also had brides just simply put "The Dougherty Family." You can do this, but it is just a little less specific as far as telling the parents exactly which kids are invited. Adding the kids' names provides clarity, which is helpful when you've omitted the inner envelope.

So that's it. Not too bad, right?

More FAQs:

Invitation Wording
Popular Wedding Fonts