Ah, wedding stationery. Something that should be so simple can get so complicated! The makers of wedding invitations and other forms of wedding stationery would have you believe that everything from tissue paper liners to hand-drawn custom maps are vital, but nothing could be further from the truth. As with almost everything else associated with weddings, your wedding stationery suite should be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. Some brides and groom print their own, either using wedding invitation kits or DIY prowess. Others buy fancy letterpress invitations or even spring for proper engraving. What your wedding stationery looks like is up to you — there are no right ways or wrong ways to invite people to your wedding. That said, the world of wedding stationery can be a confusing one, so here’s a breakdown of the most common pieces and a bit about whether you really need them.

Save-the-Date Cards

These relatively new letters of intent are only truly necessary if you’re having a destination wedding that will require most or all of your guests to travel and thus make travel arrangements. Sending out save-the-date cards is a courtesy that allows your loved ones to book plane tickets and hotel rooms when deals are still available instead of six weeks prior to the wedding, at which time everything is booked full or super pricey. If, however, you’re getting married locally, and most of your wedding guests will be aware of the details in advance of the invitations being sent out, you don’t truly need save-the-date cards.

Wedding Invitations

We’ll go right ahead and say that anyone inviting people to their wedding will require some form of wedding invitations. That invitation, however, does not need to be printed on heavyweight ecru cardstock or feature fancy engraving. There are so many forms of printing nowadays and so many beautiful papers that we think it’s a shame to only look at what some would call “proper” wedding invitations. Yes, you need wedding invitations, but think outside of the box when choosing yours. We’re fans of the brides and grooms who take a stab at designing their own wedding invitations — whether they print them at home or not — though we recognize that not everyone is skilled in the graphic arts.

RSVP Cards

These tend to get bundled with wedding invitations, though we will say they aren’t strictly necessary. Miss Manners and her set will tell you that the proper way to respond to an invitation is with a hand written note, not a tick in a checkbox on a pre-printed RSVP card. However, we understand that the chances of your guests actually sitting down to compose a handwritten note are quite slim, and the RSVP card is consequently the bride’s little helper. Anything that makes the bride’s life that much easier is, in our opinion, quite important indeed.

Wedding Maps

Google maps… fancy GPS units… cell phones with Internet access… the road atlas in the trunk of your car… all these things tell us that while pretty wedding maps are a lovely part of a wedding stationery suite, they can be omitted without coming out on the wrong side of etiquette. Just think of all the money you’ll save by scrapping the wedding maps, and that’s money that can be devoted to, say, an open bar or another day of honeymooning!