I can understand your point of view, @oldfort, and wouldn’t be surprised if some cultural relevance comes into play for the way you feel. Is it possible that different cultural norms in FSIL’s family makes it so that they don’t equate value and honor with monetary spending or gifts? Or they could just be really strapped for cash from the daughter’s wedding.
Again, it is not abut amount of money, it is about the effort and gesture.
My husband and I never felt that we married each other’s families. We didn’t even have much contact with our families for the first ten years after our marriage. We lived an hour away from some of them but saw them maybe once a year. Nobody ever seemed to feel the need to see one another more frequently than that.
Then, we had children, and suddenly, we were interesting enough for them to visit us or invite us to visit them a few times. (No one else on either side of the family had children, so we truly were a novelty.) But that wore off pretty quickly for everyone except my father, who seemed to have enough of a genuine interest in his grandchildren to spend time with them even though it meant spending time with my husband, whom he disliked (and who disliked him just as much).
Not all families are close. Not all families expect to be close. I actually thought that my husband and I had fairly good relationships with our parents and parents-in-law because there were never the high-volume screaming matches that I saw between my own parents and their in-laws.
Back to wedding planning…
We are going to order invitations online. I know this was discussed earlier…but we are looking at Viataprint, Minted, and Wedding Paper Divas.
I think we are getting Sve the Date from Shutterfly…maybe.
Any pearls of wisdom here??
In some cultures though it isn’t just the marriage of two people it is the joining of two families.
Anyway back to wedding planning.
@thumper1, my daughter and her fiance got prompt service and nice-looking invitations from a company called Shine, which used to be an Etsy shop but seems to have grown beyond that. Shine has a limited variety of invitation styles, but if you happen to like what they offer, they could be a good choice.
One advantage of Shine is that you have total control over the wording of the invitation; you don’t have to fit it into a template.
A disadvantage is that, at least the last time I looked, they don’t have styles that include photos. So if you want a photo in your save-the-dates, you’re going to have to go elsewhere.
I can’t comment on Shine’s envelope addressing service because my daughter didn’t use that.
Thumper, my D got Wedding Paper Divas invitations, and they were gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. Very quick turnaround and very good price.
My S and FDIL ordered their invitations from Minted. I haven’t seen the final product yet, but they were extremely pleased with the process and the level of assistance they received from the designer when they wanted to make changes. They are also having the envelopes addressed as part of the package and will only have to stuff and send.
We aren’t having the envelopes addressed by the company. I have that covered here.
No photos on the invites…but maybe one on the Save the date.
I think we need about 80 invitations. Inviting about 130 but many are couples.
I did the rehearsal dinner invitations with Minted for my son’s wedding and was very please with the service and final product. I had them address the envelopes as it was included free, so why not! 
My son and DIL did not like something on the sample invite, but one email and it was removed from the invitation. It had a tree with a heart carved into it where you could put the couples initials; they thought it was a bit cheesy!
Samples? You can get a sample?
If it was free, I would get the addresses done. Everyone I know had to pay.
Minted offers a sample pack, complete with samples of paper, fonts etc. Once you choose an invitation and order, you get a proof on which you are assigned a designer and can request changes. I believe that the addressing service is free - my S said he completed a spreadsheet with all the addresses and received a proof of each individual envelope to check for accuracy. I haven’t seen the invitations yet, but S and FDIL are very happy with the results.
Yes, with Minted, as well as the other companies that offer addressing, you have to upload a spread sheet with the addresses. Of course, my son, and then my daughter a year later, used difference companies and the format for the spreadsheet was different for each, so we had to tweak how the names were entered.
With Minted, the same font as the invitation was used. I though they were beautiful!
Wedding Paper Divas also offers a sample pack with paper samples, fonts, designs, etc. DD is coming home for a visit this weekend and is bringing all her stationery samples for me to see!
She and I are discussing the wording of the invitations. We are both hopelessly behind-the-times on some of the modern wedding etiquette. Does anyone even still use the traditional formal wording (“Mr and Mrs Clueless request the honor of your presence…”)? D doesn’t want anything too casual but neither of us is sure about other options. If it matters, my husband and I are paying for the wedding, but we don’t really care - that much - about the wording of the invitations.
Hat is the wording we are using…
MR. And Mrs. thumper request the pleasure of your company
Or something like that.
@scout59 That is the traditional wording. You are paying so you are the host and are doing the inviting.
If you aren’t a stickler for that, I have also seen “Together with their families, Jane Doe and John Smith request the honor of your presence…”. This makes sense if couple is largely paying, but my cousin’s D’s invites use this wording and the parents are paying (maybe G’s parents also contributing) so I think it’s just another option.
Thanks @thumper1 and @scmom12 - that’s the way I did it for my own wedding but I didn’t know if I was being hopelessly old-fashioned. I read somewhere that the “honour of your presence” wording is used if the ceremony will be in a house of worship (which it will be.)
My daughter and her soon-to-be husband are hosting their own wedding and largely (though not entirely) paying for it. The ceremony will be nonreligious and will take place in a hotel. They went with this wording:
“You are cordially invited to attend the wedding of [bride’s full name] and [groom’s full name]…”
It’s nontraditional, but it does the job, and it isn’t cutesy. (They don’t do cutesy.) I like it.
Question: If you use the traditional wording, is it still Mr. and Mrs. Hisname Lastname, with the wife’s first name completely ignored?
One of the reasons why I like my daughter’s nontraditional wording is that it would have bugged me to be Mrs. Myhusbandsname Lastname on the invitation. I like it a lot better that I’m not there at all.
We are using Mr. And Mrs. thumper. We think…but we might do just our first and last names…
E.g. Suzy and Glenn Thumper request the pleasure of your company …
I honestly don’t see anything wrong with either wording.
I think that Mr. and Mrs Thumper with no first names might look a little odd. Have you seen invitations done that way?
I thought the choices were between Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Thumper and Suzy and Glenn Thumper.