Wedding Announcement Cards

Announcement cards are sent after a wedding if there were no invitations issued. They are often sent instead of invitations to friends who live at too great a distance to be present at the ceremony. They require no acknowledgment though it is customary to send either a note expressing good wishes or a gift of some kind. If one lives in the same community one should call on the bride's mother, and if the bride's card is enclosed, on the bride herself shortly after she returns from the honeymoon. This is the usual form for the announcement card:  

Mr. and Mrs. Roger Smith
announce the marriage of their daughter
Rose Madeline
to
Mr. Frank Breckenridge
on Thursday, April the first
one thousand nine hundred and twenty-one

In case of a second marriage of the bride, the announcement card reads in this manner:

Mr. Robert G. Gainsworth
and
Mrs. Herbert Gaylord Smith
announce their marriage
on Tuesday, August the Eleventh
one thousand nine hundred and ninety-one

The bride uses the announcement above only when she is a widow. A divorcee uses her own first and second names, with the surname of the divorced husband.

The announcement card is engraved on sheets of white paper similar in size and texture to those used for the invitation. It is posted on the day of the wedding. The forms given above may be modified by adding the name of the church in which the ceremony was held, or the home address of the bride if it was a home wedding.

With the wedding invitation or the announcement card the "at home" card of the bride may be included, giving the date of her return from the honeymoon and her future address. Thus:

Mr. and Mrs. K.N. Littleton
At Home in Forest Hills
After the eighteenth of August
on Monday, the fifth of June  
at twelve o'clock  
at the residence of  
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Smith Hopkins
Eighteen Johns Street

 

Wedding invitation wording