Anniversary party invitations: who hosts, and how the wording changes

Whoever is inviting, which after twenty-five years of marriage is often not the couple. This is the single biggest difference between an anniversary invitation and every other invitation in a family’s life, and it changes the grammar of the whole card rather than one line of it.

The couple host. Standard at a twenty-fifth and a thirtieth. Their names go at the top, first person or third as you like, replies come to them, and they can be as informal as they want about a party they are paying for. Examples one, six and seven below.

The children host, and the couple are guests. Standard from a fortieth onwards, and the version that catches people out, because the two people the card is about are not the two people inviting. They are being honoured rather than married, so they do not appear until after the host line, and they arrive introduced: “Claire, Duncan and Fiona Hargreaves request the pleasure of your company at a dinner in honour of their parents, Rosemary and Alan Hargreaves”. Nothing follows that about a service, a celebrant or a time to be seated, because there is nothing to be seated for — which is the whole distance between this card and the identically-hosted vow renewal invitation, where that generation-swapped grammar gets a paragraph of its own. Three of the eight wordings below are written this way: examples two, three and four.

The grandchildren host. Common at a sixtieth, when the children are themselves in their sixties, and at any milestone where a grandchild is the one who organises things. Warmer register, shortest card of the lot, and the honoured couple are named as “our grandparents” rather than by relationship to the hosts’ parents. Examples five and eight.

Whoever hosts, name one person on the reply line with one real phone number or email address. “R.S.V.P. to the family” reliably produces silence: a guest who cannot see who to answer answers nobody, and the calls that do come all land on whichever sibling is easiest to find. Outside the card, none of this changes the envelope — how to address wedding invitations handles a fifty-year guest list of widows, second marriages and doctors the same way it handles a wedding one.

Set out with the words taken away, an anniversary card is these lines in this order:

Say it once, in one line, second from the bottom, and stop. The length of the request is what makes it sound like a rule: a single line is information, and a paragraph is an instruction with a subtext that guests will go looking for.

When the children are hosting there is a stronger form available, and it is worth using: “Our parents have asked for no gifts.” It is the couple’s request rather than the hosts’, which is both true and impossible to argue with. Three more that work:

• No gifts — we have had twenty-five years of them.
• Please bring nothing but yourselves.
• No gifts. Bring a story about them instead.

If you would rather ask for something than for nothing, make it small, specific and bounded — one memory, a paragraph, bring it with you, we are making a book. “Send us your memories” gets four replies; “write down one memory and bring it on the day” gets most of the room. Example eight is that wording in full. A donation line works the same way and for the same reason: it is not about their house.

And a no-gift line is a courtesy, not a door policy. Some guests will bring something anyway. Put one person who is not hosting in charge of a side table, and write to them all within a fortnight.

One question settles it: will anybody say vows out loud? If yes, it is a vow renewal and the invitation has a ceremony in it. If no, it is a party, and everything on this page applies.

The difference shows up in the wording as times. A renewal invitation gives two — the ceremony, then what follows — because guests have to be seated for the first one and need to know when. A party invitation gives one arrival time, and every wording above is built that way. If you find yourself needing the word “ceremony”, you are writing a renewal.

It also shows up in what the invitation is allowed to promise. A renewal has a form of words said in front of people, which is why its page is largely about what the wording may not say. A party has a toast, which is not a ceremony but still wants a stated time on the card so nobody is queuing at the bar for it.

Plenty of fiftieths are both: vows at four, dinner at six. Then the invitation says so in two lines rather than one, and the renewal page is the guide to the first of them. And if the celebration you are planning is at the other end of a marriage rather than this one, engagement party invitations is the sibling page.

Six to eight weeks ahead for a local lunch or dinner; three months or more when guests are travelling, rooms are being held, or the guest list has crossed a border. Earlier again for a surprise, for the diary reason above. Set the reply date about three weeks before the party and put it on the card — an anniversary guest list contains a lot of people who will absolutely come and will absolutely not think to say so.

A digital invitation is one link that carries the wording, the arrival time, a map, the speeches and the reply. It is $49 at checkout today with SUMMER45, applied automatically until Oct 31 — list price $89 — paid once however long the guest list runs, and it stays up through the party and at least 90 days after. Nothing is due while you are writing it: build the card, put one of the wordings below into it, and let your first 10 guests open it before you pay. There are no stamps either, which matters here more than at a wedding: an anniversary guest list is fifty years of addresses and a good share of them have changed.

A link has one specific advantage for this occasion, and it is not the price. An anniversary guest list is the hardest list in a family to reach: it is friends of fifty years, in-laws, grandchildren, three people who were at the wedding, and a dozen addresses that are out of date. A link goes wherever you already have a way to reach somebody — a text, a WhatsApp message, an email, read out over the phone to the four who need that — and the same link carries the reply back. For the ones who will never type into a form, keep the phone number on the card and take their answer yourself.