Monthly Archives: February 2021

How to Design and Send the Perfect Hen Party Invitations

The hen night is one of the most exciting pre-wedding celebrations, and something that every bride looks forward to for months and months. If you’re hosting a hen party for a close friend or relative, you’ll need to know how to put together the perfect invitations.
This guide will talk you through why it’s important to send paper invitations for a hen party, and what information you’ll need to include. We’ll also explore the different themes available for your invitations, and explain when and how to order them.
Do You Need to Send Invitations for a Hen Do?
The hen night (or, as it’s called in the U.S., the bachelorette party) is a celebration for the bride held before the wedding. Only female guests are invited, and the groom isn’t present. It’s typically a much more casual occasion than the wedding itself – usually held at a pub, cocktail bar, or the host’s house. So you may wonder, are formal paper invitations even necessary?
In short, yes. If they get a paper invitation, your invitees will be much more likely to RSVP than if you simply send them a text, or invite them to a Facebook event. And you’ll need an accurate head count in advance if you’re serving food, or if you need everyone who’s coming to contribute to the funds.
Having a physical invitation that guests can pin to their fridge or notice board means they won’t forget about the party. It’ll also help to get them excited for the occasion, and make it feel special!
What to Include on a Hen Night Invitation
So, what information do you actually need to include on a hen party invitation? Here’s what the guests will need to know.
• The bride’s name, and a rough idea of what the party will entail (e.g. “Join us for an evening of drinking, dancing and karaoke at Nikki’s hen party!”)
• The name of the person hosting the party (so guests know who to contact if they have any questions or problems)
• The location – where everyone should meet to kick the evening off. You may, of course, move on to a different venue eventually. You can include details of this, or leave it as a surprise.
• The date and start time (you don’t have to include an end time, unless the venue is very strict about when you need to leave)
• The RSVP deadline – the date by which you need to know who’s coming and who isn’t
• Some way to RSVP. You could attach a reply card, or provide the host’s telephone number or e-mail address.
If you’re using a reply card, you should also include a stamped, addressed envelope for it to be sent back in.
Hen Do Invitation Themes
Now you know what to write, let’s talk about what the invitation should look like. Ideally, you’ll want to choose an appropriate theme and colour scheme, which has something to do with the party itself.
For example, if the party will be held near Christmas, you might choose a holiday or winter themed invitation. Or if your vision for the evening is a classy cocktail party, a design that’s elegant and formal would suit it better.
The theme of the hen party invitation does not need to match the theme of the wedding itself (although it can if you’d like it to). Here are some hen party invite theme ideas.
Contemporary

A contemporary, modern or casual invitation would be great if the hen night is going to be a fun and relaxed event, rather than a formal affair. You might be along the lines of a traditional British hen night – cheap drinks, karaoke, dancing, or games and trivia at the local pub. Something like this funky zebra design, or this cocktail-themed lime time invitation might be perfect.
Elegant

Are you hosting a more sophisticated, formal hen night? Perhaps you’re going to a posh spa or ballroom dancing class, or holding an evening of champagne and dinner at an upscale restaurant, for example. An elegant design with a cursive font, such as this black and white flirty swirl design, may be more appropriate.
Romantic

If your hen party will focus less on the “last celebration as a single woman” and more on the “you’ve found the love of your life” aspect, you might prefer one of our romantic designs. A romantic design is perfect for celebrating the beauty of finding your soulmate. For example, this perfect pair design, featuring two lovebirds.
Destination

If your hens are lucky enough to be jetting off to a fabulous holiday resort, or even if you’re celebrating in a local seaside town, one of our sun-and-sand themed destination templates might work well. You might choose this fun seaside romance invitation, featuring two starfish set against a wavy blue background.
Rustic

For a hen party that’s themed around the great outdoors, such as a mini camping weekend or a festival in a field, you’ll want a rustic-themed invitation that reflects nature. This green earth template features a plant swaying in the breeze against a grassy green and brown background.
If you can’t find a theme that works well for your needs, you can always use our handy tool to create your own design. You’ll start off with a blank white canvas and can choose your own colours, or even upload your own artwork.
FAQs: Does the Bride Get a Hen Night Invitation?
Most of the time you’ll want to send the bride an invitation to her own hen night. After all, she usually won’t have been involved in the planning, so she’ll need to know where to be and at what time!
The only exceptions are:
• If the bride has helped organise the hen night, and already knows exactly what’s happening and when
• If you want to keep the hen night a complete secret from the bride (not tell her where you’re going or what you’re doing).
In this case, you can either create her a personalised invitation that doesn’t give the game away, or simply tell her where to go and at what time.
When to Send Out Hen Party Invitations

You’ll want to send out your hen night invitations at least 6-12 weeks in advance. This will give everyone a chance to book time off work and/or arrange childcare for the evening, as well as get their RSVP back to you in time. If it’s a destination party and the guests will need to travel, you should send them even earlier – at least 6 months out.
If you are expecting the guests to contribute towards the cost of the hen party, you’ll also need to figure out how much everyone owes, and you can’t do this until you know exactly who’s coming. So make sure you order your invitations in plenty of time.
Before sending out your invitations, run a guest list past the bride, so that she can veto anyone who she doesn’t want coming – and inform you if you have anyone’s addresses wrong.
Where to Order Hen Party Invites

A hen night is a once in a lifetime experience for any bride to be. So, you don’t want to go generic and buy a pack of standard party invitations from your local stationery shop. Instead, we’d recommend ordering personalised invitations – make them special enough to match the magnitude of the occasion!
You can order high-quality, fully customisable hen party invitations from 123Print. Choose one of our many templates and edit it to your liking, or create your own entirely from scratch! All of our hen party invitations are printed to your specifications and come complete with envelopes. We’re so sure that you’ll love the quality of our printing that we offer a 100% money back guarantee if you’re not satisfied.

Wedding Reply Cards or Digital RSVPs: Which Is Better?

How should guests RSVP for a wedding? The traditional way, of course, is by returning a paper reply card that the invitee would receive with their wedding invitation. The guest would fill this card out with their name, and tick a box to indicate whether they can attend the wedding. They’d then return this card to the host of the wedding using a stamped, addressed envelope that would be included in the invitation suite.
But in today’s digital world, digital RSVPs are becoming more and more common. Many couples set up a wedding website, which contains an online RSVP form for each guest to fill out. You simply include the link to the website on your invitation, so that your guests will know where to go: no paper or postage required.
As you might expect, there are both upsides and downsides to the digital approach. While it saves money and trees, it might prove confusing for older guests, or be perceived as inappropriately casual for a formal wedding.
Today, we’ll compare paper and digital wedding RSVPs, and figure out which method has the edge. By the end of this guide, you should have a good idea of which one will work best for you and your guests.
Paper vs. Digital RSVPs: Pros and Cons
Let’s jump right into it, and take a look at the pros and cons of paper and digital wedding RSVPs. We’ll discuss what impact each choice might have on your budget, your time, the environment, and the way your wedding will be perceived by guests. We’ll also discuss how accessible or ‘user friendly’ each option will be for your invitees.
Budget
One of the most popular reasons (if not the main reason) to opt for a digital RSVP system is the money-saving opportunity. Physical reply cards can be pricey, depending on where you order them from. You will also need to pay postage, both for sending the cards to your invitees, and for getting them back (you’ll need to include a stamped, addressed envelope for your invitee to use).
These costs are completely eliminated if you ask your guests to send you a digital reply. However, you will need to pay for the setup, design and hosting of your wedding website, if you want to go the digital form route.
Time and Effort
There’s no doubt that paper reply cards take a lot more time and effort to write, send, and organise than digital RSVPs. You have to:
• Design your cards and have them printed
• Write your guests’ names individually on each reply card (unless you’re letting your guests fill in their own names – though bear in mind that if you do this, they may add extra guests or plus ones that you hadn’t intended on inviting)
• Prepare a stamped, addressed envelope to post along with your reply cards (so that your invitees can send them back to you)
• Go to the post-box to send them all off
• Gather all of your replies, read each one and compile the data
Of course, it also takes time and effort to design a wedding website and set up the online form – but probably not as much. Only you know which one you’d find more taxing.
Environmental Impact
If you are an eco-conscious sort of person, you might take issue with the amount of paper that your paper reply cards will use (and the envelopes they get sent back to you in). It’s true that digital RSVPs are much better for the planet in this regard, and have less of an impact on the environment.
It’s not all bad news, though – paper reply cards are fully recyclable, as long as they don’t contain any glitter or foil in their design. After your wedding, you can simply pop them into your paper or cardboard recycling bin, if you don’t want to keep them.
Formality
Paper reply cards are very traditional for weddings, and therefore seen as the most formal option. If you want your wedding day to have a classic, elegant, formal feel, we’d definitely recommend going with paper RSVPs.
Older guests in particular are likely to sniff at the idea of replying to a wedding digitally, and see it as almost offensively casual for such an important occasion.
While younger generations won’t mind the idea of reply to an invitation over the internet, they may be less inclined to bother replying. Sending out a paper reply card conveys the significance of the event (and lets your invitees know you’re seriously expecting a RSVP).
Aesthetics
As well as coming across s more formal and ‘proper’, many newlyweds-to-be prefer the aesthetics of a paper reply card, rather than a digital one. By designing your own reply cards you can inject your personal style into them, and coordinate them with your wedding theme. This is something both you and your guests will really appreciate, and isn’t really possible with a form on a website.
You can also keep your reply cards as a memento of your wedding day, which you can’t do with digital replies. Many couples enjoy reading the handwritten comments on their reply cards from all of their loved ones.
Accessibility
Although we’re well into the digital age, not everyone finds it easy to use modern technology – particularly the older generations. If you’re planning to use digital RSVPs for your wedding, you must be sure that every single one of your invitees has access to the internet, and would be tech-savvy enough to understand how to submit their reply.
Think of your grandparents, great-aunts and uncles – would they be able to use a digital RSVP system, or would they be more comfortable filling out a traditional reply card? Use your best judgement here. If your system isn’t accessible to many of your guests, you’ll have to spend a lot of time talking them through it, or telephoning them to ask for their RSVP.
Technical Problems
We all know that technology isn’t perfect. It’s no secret that websites can experience glitches and errors, and e-mails can get sent into somebody’s junk folder without them realising. With this in mind, it’s possible that you may lose some of your digital RSVPs in this manner. This may mean that you have to spend a lot of time phoning the guests you haven’t heard from, and getting them to submit their reply again.
Of course, paper invitations can also get lost in the post. But this is relatively rare compared to glitches with e-forms, and far less likely to happen.
The Verdict

Taking into account every pro and con, we feel that paper RSVP cards are still the best way to go.
Going digital may be the cheapest and least time-consuming option; however, you risk singling out any guests that aren’t comfortable using technology. You also risk your guests forgetting to reply without a physical card to remind them, or losing some of your responses to technical glitches.
If you would like to offer your guests a way to reply digitally, the best thing to do is to provide both a paper reply card and an e-mail address or online reply form. That way, your invitees themselves can decide which RSVP method they’d prefer to use.
What Should I Include on a Wedding RSVP?
Whether you’re going to opt for paper or digital RSVPs, you will need the following information:
• The names of each guest that’s invited. You can fill this out yourself, or have a space for your guests to write their names. Make it clear whether children and/or plus ones are invited.
• The RSVP deadline (the date that your guests must reply by)
• A space for your invitees to indicate whether they are or are not attending (e.g. a tick box, or a drop-down menu with ‘yes’ and ‘no’ options)
• Optional: a way for guests to select their meal choice
• Space for guests to inform you of allergies, intolerances or other dietary requirements
You might also wish to include a free space for guests to wish you well, express their excitement, or add a song recommendation for your DJ’s playlist, for example.
If you’re using paper reply cards, you can design them with space in mind for every bit of information you need.
For online forms, simply incorporate either a blank text box or a drop-down menu for each detail you’re requesting. It’s a good idea to make every question mandatory – so that if your invitee tries to leave a box blank, it will give them an error asking them to fill it out.
Where Can I Order Wedding Reply Cards?
If you’ve decided to go with the traditional option of paper RSVP cards, you can order yours today from 123Print. Create your own design from a blank slate, or select from one of our hundreds of fully customisable templates. We have styles and themes to suit every kind of wedding, from casual and beachy to classically elegant.
Whichever design you choose, you can edit the text for free to include any extra details or information. For example, you could add a space for guests to indicate their choice of meal, the name of their plus one, or a song recommendation for the DJ.
Choose between matte, pearlescent or textured card stock for your professionally printed design, which will be dispatched within 2 working days. The more you order, the more you save – so make sure you order plenty of extras!