Wedding card messages for every kind of couple

The structure that always works

Name both people, congratulate them, add your one specific line, and sign. The specific line is where most cards go wrong, because people reach for a general truth about marriage instead of a particular observation about these two. Something you have noticed — how they are with each other in a kitchen, what changed when they met — beats any aphorism. Keep advice out unless it was asked for. If you are writing on behalf of a couple or a family, use both names in the signature rather than one name plus and family, which reads as an afterthought on a card that will be kept.

• Greeting: Congratulations, Aisha and Tom.
• Specific line: you two argue about maps and agree about everything that matters.
• Wish: wishing you a long and unremarkable happiness, in the best sense.
• Signature: With love from Sam and Dani.

For close friends and couples you know well

Close cards can be plain. The intimacy is in the detail, not the vocabulary, so resist the pull towards formal language just because the occasion is formal. Reference something real from the friendship and let the wish be short. It also helps to write as though the couple will read the card again in ten years, which they probably will, since wedding cards survive in a box longer than almost any other kind. That means naming people and places rather than relying on jokes that will need explaining later on. Read the card back once before you seal it, since the couple will read it far more often than you will.

• I have watched this go from a maybe to a certainty, and it has been a pleasure throughout.
• You have chosen well, and so has he. Wishing you decades of the evenings you both like best.
• Today was lovely and loud. The rest of it, I hope, is quiet and long.
• Thank you for a day we will be talking about for years, and for letting us be there.
• Marriage suits you both already, which I suspect you knew before the paperwork.

For family, and for cards read out loud

Family cards are often read aloud or kept for decades, so write for a second reading. Parents of the couple can say the thing they would not manage in a speech, and that is usually the line the couple remembers. Grandparents can be direct, because at that distance directness reads as warmth rather than bluntness. Siblings can be funny, but keep the joke on the sibling rather than on the new partner, who is being introduced to a family and reading everything carefully. Welcome lines matter more than clever ones here. Sign with the names the couple actually use for you rather than the formal versions.

• From a parent: we have gained a daughter and lost an argument about the seating plan.
• From a parent, plainer: watching you choose each other has been the proudest part of the year.
• From a grandparent: sixty-one years ago I sat where you are sitting. It is worth every day.
• From a sibling: you have found somebody who laughs at your stories. I carried that job since 1998.
• To a new in-law: we are loud, we are early, and we will ask you to help move furniture.

When you are giving money, or cannot attend

Money is the most common wedding gift and the most awkward thing to mention. The rule is to name the purpose, not the amount: say what you hope it goes towards and the envelope stops feeling transactional. If you cannot attend, say so once, briefly, without a paragraph of explanation, and then write the card as though you were there. A long apology shifts the card onto your circumstances, which is not what the couple opened it for. Write the line about the money last, after the congratulations, so it never becomes the opening sentence of the card. The rule bears repeating: purpose, never amount.

• With money: a small contribution towards the trip you keep describing at dinner. Send photographs.
• With money, for a home: something towards the flat, the garden, or whichever room comes first.
• For a wedding list: your list was suspiciously well organised, which tells us who wrote it.
• Unable to attend: sorry to miss the day, and glad to hear about all of it afterwards.
• Unable to attend, family: we will raise a glass here at four o’clock.

Second marriages, small ceremonies and the card itself

Not every wedding is a first wedding or a large one, and the standard wording can land badly. Drop anything about the start of a life together for a couple already together fifteen years, and drop the word wedding if the couple did not use it themselves. For a small ceremony, the compliment is the smallness. For a civil partnership or an elopement, congratulate the decision rather than the event. Write both names on the envelope, use dark ink, and leave the right-hand panel free if several people are signing.

For the card itself, Festivo AI can generate one from a prompt in AI mode, or let you edit the wording on a ready layout in template mode, then download a print-ready PNG at A6, A5, A4 or a custom pixel size.

• Long-term couple: twelve years in, this changes nothing and means everything.
• Second marriage: a fine thing to watch somebody get it right and know exactly why.
• Small ceremony: eleven people and a very good lunch. You two do things properly.
• Elopement: you told nobody, which was correct, and we forgive you already.
• Civil partnership: the paperwork has finally caught up with the rest of us.