Invitation Wording Dilemma: Listing (or not!) the Groom’s Parents

We counsel brides (yes, sometimes we feel like counselors!) every day on the best strategies for wedding invitation wording that reflects unique situations. One of the questions we frequently receive surrounds the traditional practice of listing the bride’s parents on the invitation, but not the groom’s.

A wedding invitation is just like an invite to any other party, where the hosts are the ones doing the inviting. Traditionally, even though the happy couple, the groom’s parents, and a cadre of friends and well-meaning aunties may be involved in the planning, the bride’s parents are the ones who foot the bill and, therefore, are considered the hosts of the wedding. As hosts, they are the ones listed as requesting the honour of your presence. It’s not a slight to the groom’s side, but rather a logical course of action.

Of course, in today’s world, the bride’s parents aren’t always necessarily the ones covering the lion’s share of the cost. And we very often see invitations where the groom’s parents or the couple themselves are listed as the event’s hosts. The decision is most practically determined by choosing to name the event’s host and leaving it at that.

But what’s a bride (or groom) to do if one set of parents (or a single parent) is paying and the other family is griping about not receiving some sort of shout out on the invitation? Rest assured, we’ve seen it all! We’ll start hitting on some of these potentially stickier situations on the blog next week… stay tuned!

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