Among the questions I ask my clients in our initial consult is “do you want/need to include a details card in your wedding invitation suite?” Sometimes I’m met with a definitive yes or no, but more often than not, it’s more of a 🤷!
The good news is, I’m here to walk you through it and to make sure your wedding invitation suite not only sets the stage for your amazing wedding day, but effectively (and beautifully) communicates everything your guests need to know to join in the celebration.
Do I need a Details Card in my Wedding Invitation Suite?
To kick things off, I’ve created this handy flow chart graphic to help you determine if you should include a wedding details card in your invitation suite. Read on and I’ll walk you through when it likely does – or does not – make sense, with plenty of wedding details card examples.
ARE you having more than one event during your wedding weekend?
This is the most important question to ask when deciding how many pieces to include in your wedding invitation suite. To start, the wedding invitation itself should do one job, and do it very well. Your wedding invitation invites your favorite people to your wedding ceremony and reception, sharing the pertinent details of the wedding ceremony and wedding reception time, date and location. Don’t ask it to do too much, just let it stand out in all of its magnificent glory and leave the hard work to the “worker bee” pieces of the wedding invitation suite like the RSVP card or details card.
Often, your wedding celebrations don‘t start or end at the ceremony and reception! You may be hosting a welcome or rehearsal dinner, a farewell brunch, a bridal luncheon, golf outing, or more. At my wedding, for example, we hosted a welcome “pig roast” the night before the wedding, a yoga session the morning of the wedding, and a big group hike (complete with trailhead breakfast burritos) the morning after.
A wedding details card is a wonderful way to not only showcase these additional celebrations and key details to help your guests plan, but also add another beautiful and personal design element to your wedding invitation suite.
One important thing to note is that whoever receives the details card is invited to all events, so for something like a rehearsal dinner, which may have a limited invite list of immediate family and/or out of town guests, you should consider separate invitations to those events.
Do you have other important details to share, like a wedding registry, transportation, or lodging details?
Not to stress you out, but sometimes inviting your favorite people to your wedding celebration comes with A LOT of planning 😉. This is especially true if you are planning a wedding where the majority of the guests will be traveling to attend such as getting married in a Colorado mountain town or hosting a true destination wedding on a beach in Mexico. These wedding planning logistics may include transportation to and from the venue, hotel room blocks, and more.
If this is the case, including a details card can make it easier and less stressful for your guests. It’s a straightforward way to show that basically, you’ve done all of the planning for them, so they don’t have to stress about their attendance and can instead focus on that wedding registry link you’ve shared (haha)!
Do you plan to have a wedding website?
If you are having multiple wedding events, or need to communicate additional wedding details, you may also be considering having a wedding website. If you do have a wedding website, you could potentially forego the details card in lieu of simply listing your wedding website on one of your other invitation suite pieces, like the RSVP card. Alternatively, you can choose a more simplified details card, that because of its size and level of detail, may be more more cost effective.
One significant factor in making this determination is if you are having mail-in or online RSVPs (I’ll be covering this topic, as well as wedding websites, in a future blog post). If you are having people mail-in their RSVP, you may want to use a printed details card so that people don’t HAVE to go to your website. If you are having online RSVPs, people have to go to your website to RSVP, so you may choose to focus your efforts on drive them online to find all of the information they might need.
In the example below, we used a circular details card to share the wedding website as the place to RSVP and get all of the additional details!
Ready to design the perfect wedding invitation details card? On top of serving a very important function, wedding details cards can be a really fun way to share the details of your wedding celebration while also creating a fun, unique design piece as part of a beautiful wedding invitation suite. It’s another place to infuse your personality and help set the stage for what people will expect as a guest at your wedding.
If you are looking for uniquely personal, beautiful and bold stationery for your wedding or other life event, I’m your gal. Contact me today so we can set-up a complimentary consultation call to walk through all of your options!