Our daughter will be ordering wedding invitations soon. Do we still have to ‘hand address’ wedding invitations? Can we use a great script font and pretty foil labels? Is that acceptable today? Thank you.

What a great question. There are so many beautiful ways to address invitations now. It’s strictly a matter of your personal preference, budget, and what’s popular where you live. A wedding invitation is a once-in-a-lifetime (one hopes) opportunity to create a memorable document that reflects the personal taste of the bride and groom, as well as giving a hint of what kind of wedding celebration guests can expect. You have so many extraordinary printed envelope choices today, why wouldn’t you explore those options? And while it’s traditional to print the return address on the back envelope flap of the invitation rather than on a label,  “traditional” does not mean “mandatory”.

Here’s the thing about all these rules of etiquette: you know a rule is worth following if it’s based in common courtesy and kindness. If it isn’t, then I wouldn’t worry much about following that rule. People have always addressed invitations by hand because that was their only option, and so a tradition grew from it. If you want to follow the tradition, that’s lovely, but you shouldn’t let it dictate what you do. I think it’s more important to plan your wedding in a way that makes you happy, and if you like a printed font, use it and enjoy it!