1. Time it Right
When you’re sending an invitation, timing is everything. “Don’t send it too early, or people will forget,” says Karen Van Every, founder of Serimony Invitations and Announcements in Brooklyn. Aim to get invites out three to five weeks before your event (three weeks if it’s, say, a small corporate dinner; five if your event is large or falls during the busy holiday season). “That gives people [time] to prepare and put it in their calendars, but it’s not so early that they’ll let it get lost under a stack of papers,” she says. Nancy Norris, vice president of integrated communications for New York-based MICE iCom, suggests timing invites to arrive midmonth, when salespeople and financial types aren’t bogged down with end-of-the-month reports and paperwork.
2. Set the Tone
“The party starts as soon as the invitation is opened—it sets the tone of the event,” says John Kneapler of John Kneapler Design. Engraving, elegant fonts, expensive card stock, and embellishments like wax seals all scream “black tie”—and could confuse guests on an invite for a picnic-themed party. So the design should make it obvious to guests what type of event it is.
3. Do a Test Run
Much thought goes into the design of an invitation, but few people think about how it looks when it actually arrives in the mail, says Steve Paster, president and cofounder of Alpine Creative Group. His advice: “Whenever you send an invitation out, always send one back to yourself so you can see how the client will perceive
what you’re sending.” Have the post office hand cancel each piece to avoid ugly bar codes printed across the bottom. Always use a real stamp instead of metered mail (this way it doesn’t look like junk mail), and add extra postage to be safe. (Paster once had 1,000 pieces returned because of inadequate postage, despite the fact that he’d had them weighed at the post office.) The bottom line: “You want the invite to look as nice when it arrives as it did when you sent it out.”
4. Save Money With Standard Sizes
Oversize invitations may look cool, but they’re budget killers. In addition to the extra cost involved in creating them, there’s also additional postage. When Jane Wagman of Sajedesign created an invitation for the TriBeCa Ball, she made a fun, sexy die cut of a woman’s leg in a fishnet stocking. “But it fit into a standard-size envelope,” she says. As a creative touch, the pink and black invite arrived in clear plastic envelopes that let guests see. #8220;This was a dirt cheap way to catch people’s attention,” she says.
5. Customize Your Message
If your invite list is long and diverse, don’t assume one message will entice everyone to attend. “The biggest mistake we see [with invitations] is people treating their audience as one whole audience,” says MICE iCom’s Nancy Norris. “Not all audiences should get the same message.” Norris recommends using one consistent invitation design, but customizing the wording for different segments of your list. After all, she says, “Sometimes
you can have three or four different target audiences for the same product launch.” And what’s attractive to clients might not resonate with other groups—trendsetters or journalists, for example—that you’re also trying to attract.
—Erika Rasmusson Janes
This story originally appeared in the September/October 2004 issue of the BiZBash Event Style Reporter.
When you’re sending an invitation, timing is everything. “Don’t send it too early, or people will forget,” says Karen Van Every, founder of Serimony Invitations and Announcements in Brooklyn. Aim to get invites out three to five weeks before your event (three weeks if it’s, say, a small corporate dinner; five if your event is large or falls during the busy holiday season). “That gives people [time] to prepare and put it in their calendars, but it’s not so early that they’ll let it get lost under a stack of papers,” she says. Nancy Norris, vice president of integrated communications for New York-based MICE iCom, suggests timing invites to arrive midmonth, when salespeople and financial types aren’t bogged down with end-of-the-month reports and paperwork.
2. Set the Tone
“The party starts as soon as the invitation is opened—it sets the tone of the event,” says John Kneapler of John Kneapler Design. Engraving, elegant fonts, expensive card stock, and embellishments like wax seals all scream “black tie”—and could confuse guests on an invite for a picnic-themed party. So the design should make it obvious to guests what type of event it is.
3. Do a Test Run
Much thought goes into the design of an invitation, but few people think about how it looks when it actually arrives in the mail, says Steve Paster, president and cofounder of Alpine Creative Group. His advice: “Whenever you send an invitation out, always send one back to yourself so you can see how the client will perceive
what you’re sending.” Have the post office hand cancel each piece to avoid ugly bar codes printed across the bottom. Always use a real stamp instead of metered mail (this way it doesn’t look like junk mail), and add extra postage to be safe. (Paster once had 1,000 pieces returned because of inadequate postage, despite the fact that he’d had them weighed at the post office.) The bottom line: “You want the invite to look as nice when it arrives as it did when you sent it out.”
4. Save Money With Standard Sizes
Oversize invitations may look cool, but they’re budget killers. In addition to the extra cost involved in creating them, there’s also additional postage. When Jane Wagman of Sajedesign created an invitation for the TriBeCa Ball, she made a fun, sexy die cut of a woman’s leg in a fishnet stocking. “But it fit into a standard-size envelope,” she says. As a creative touch, the pink and black invite arrived in clear plastic envelopes that let guests see. #8220;This was a dirt cheap way to catch people’s attention,” she says.
5. Customize Your Message
If your invite list is long and diverse, don’t assume one message will entice everyone to attend. “The biggest mistake we see [with invitations] is people treating their audience as one whole audience,” says MICE iCom’s Nancy Norris. “Not all audiences should get the same message.” Norris recommends using one consistent invitation design, but customizing the wording for different segments of your list. After all, she says, “Sometimes
you can have three or four different target audiences for the same product launch.” And what’s attractive to clients might not resonate with other groups—trendsetters or journalists, for example—that you’re also trying to attract.
—Erika Rasmusson Janes
This story originally appeared in the September/October 2004 issue of the BiZBash Event Style Reporter.

Creative Intelligence's lace-up vinyl invitation to the New York premiere of Catwoman matched Halle Berry's over-the-top costumes.