My parents are divorced. How should I word my wedding invitations?
Usually, the parent who raised you should be the one to do the inviting. If this happens to be your mother and she never remarried, you might want to use both her maiden name and her married name in the wording, such as Mrs. White Orrell or Deborah White Orrell (maiden name first). Or, she can simply use her married name if that is the name she still chooses to go by, such as Mrs. Deborah Orrell or Mrs. Deborah Marie Orrell. Following the wording of the name, it can read simply “…requests the honor of your presence at the marriage of her daughter Sally…”
If your parents are on friendly terms, it is perfectly acceptable for you to include both of their names on the invitation. For example, you might write:
“Deborah Marie Orrell (or Mrs. Deborah Marie Orrell) and Jerry James Orrell (or Mr. Jerry Orrell) request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Sally…”
On the other hand, if you mother has remarried, you can read the invitation to read something like:
“Mr. and Mrs. Jack Rogers request the honor of your presence at the marriage of Mrs. Rogers’ daughter…”
A similar format could be used if your father is remarried. In this case, it might read:
“Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Orrell request the honor of your presence at the marriage of Mr. Orrell’s daughter…”
If your parents are on bad terms, but you would like to include both in some way, you can have one send invitations to the ceremony while the other sends invitations to the reception, though both invitations should be included in the same envelope. In this case, your wedding invitation may read:
“Mrs. Deborah Orrell requests the honor of your presence at the
marriage of her daughter, Sally…”
Meanwhile, your reception invitation may read:
“Jerry James Orrell requests the pleasure of your company on [date and time] at [location].”
If it simply becomes too difficult to figure out which parent’s name to include on the invitation, you can simply create your invitation to read something like:
“Sally Elizabeth Orrell and Scott Brian Holton together with their parents request the honor of your presence as they are united in marriage…”