How would one address an envelope (wedding invitation) for three elderly sisters who have always lived together and never married? They travel as a unit, so I don’t think they would want separate invitations.
My current thoughts:
The Misses Smith
One Main Street
Anytown, USA
or
Miss Jane Smith
Miss June Smith
Miss Jean Smith
One Main Street
Anytown, USA
If anyone could provide a cite as well, that would be great. There might be a lot more questions of this sort as I type in addresses.
The Smith Family?
The Smith Girls
Boy, I’m not sure about that…if they’re close to you, maybe Annabelle, Gertrude, and Margaret Smith?
However, no typing on wedding invitations. Maybe you’re just typing up the list for a caligrapher? That’s how I’ve always understood the rule, anyway.
Separate invites… :mad:
I think you would do separate invitations They’re not a romantic unit, so they wouldn’t be combined into one invitation, I don’t think, unless they were young-but-not-yet-adult girls who lived with their parents and were being sent a separate invitation which is understood to be part of the family invitation.
If you do do separate invitations though, please make sure they all receive their own! You just know what’s going to happen otherwise: one gets lost and she thinks she was not invited and the other two were. Best call to check.
Would it be gauche to send three separate invitations in one outer envelope to assure that they all arrive at the same time? And if so, aren’t we back at the OP’s question?
I think three separate invitations in separate envelopes is the way to go. As long as you send them at the same time they should arrive the same day, barring rather unlikely circumstances.
Here’s a cite from their era (Amy Vanderbilt, c1952) for two sisters:
The Misses Ann and Agnes McIntosh (outer envelope)
The Misses McIntosh (inner envelope)
You can also omit “The” in both cases. For three sisters I imagine you could do this:
The Misses April, May, and June Smith
Thanks, everyone.
I’m really sure that they wouldn’t want individual invitiations. They have not gone anywhere individually in at least ten years, unless one was in the hospital. You always invite “The Smiths” as a whole.
Are you really not supposed to type the envelopes? I have some work ahead of me if that’s the case.
Scarlett67, thank you for the cite. Maybe I can fetch that from the library.
There’s no “supposed” to with weddings - you do what you want.
Remember… most people will chuck the envelope as soon as it arrives, so there’s no point spending a fortune on hand-written envelopes that will be solely for the benefit of your guests’ postman.
I’m sure most of your guests would rather you spent the money on something for your new married home, instead of calligraphically wonderful envelopes 
My fiance and I are doing all the invitations ourselves, so it’s not a cost problem. I have a month before they go out, so it won’t be too much work. But I do have unlovely handwriting. Not illegible, but not lovely.
Problem is, I’ve been adhering strictly to certain points of etiquette very strongly (i.e., no receiving line at the church) much to my family’s dismay. I can’t slack off on a different point because I would prefer it. Don’t want to be a hypocrite.
And e-logic, you sound like a wonderful wedding guest of the sort that wants the couple to be happy and have a great start in life, and you’re probably right that ‘most’ people would be like you. Unfortunately, the ones who aren’t are the vocal contingent. As long as I can say I did things properly, I will happily respond to their snark in a friendly manner.
Yes, you’re supposed to hand address envelopes- it is what is known as the personal touch, and lets your guests know that you care enough about them to hand address their envelope. Even the nicest printed envelope says “I couldn’t be bothered”. It doesn’t have to be calligraphy, just legible handwriting, so it needn’t cost more than the price of a pen.
My husband (I have appalling hand-writing) took about an hour and a half to do 150 of our wedding invitations, it’s not that big a chore, and you can do it while listening to music or with the TV on in the background.
I’d go with
Misses A, B and C Smith
for the envelope.
Separate invitations are for room-mates, single invitations for families.
I’m not certain if it would be too uncouth to only send one invitation for all three aunts or not. I’m sure they might understand about the cost of such things, and not mind since it’s one “household”. If you only send one, it should be addressed Ms. Jane, June, and Jeane Smith.
I disagree with the etiquette cited re addressing the envelopes. If you’re talking a hundred or so; I personally get really bad hand cramps that make my writing look like scribbling after just a few written.
I would set up the addresses in an Excel sheet and then mailmerge labels with Word. Way easy. Use a pretty font and clear labels and what’s the big deal?
Either of these is correct. References I’ve seen (such as this one) indicate that Scarlett’s suggestion of “The Misses Jane, June, and Jean Smith” is also acceptable. (It’s also correct, although bordering on the too-old-fashioned-to-be-viable, to address the eldest—on the top line—simply as “Miss Smith” with no first name. Rank hath its privileges, or at least it uthed to! :))
Do not address elderly ladies as “Ms.” unless you know that that’s their preferred honorific. If you know that they use “Miss”, then call them “Miss”. (That goes for non-elderly ladies too: “Ms.” is a very useful designation and is more or less standard in some situations, but individual wishes about conventional social forms of address still trump standardization.)
Yes, hand-write the envelope addresses. No, there’s no need to hire a calligrapher to do that. Rope in a friend with nice handwriting if you have to; as irishgirl says, it really doesn’t take that long to churn them out.
And no, there is nothing “uncouth” or cheap-looking about sending only one invitation to a group of family members. Roommates are generally presumed to need separate invitations because they have more or less separate social lives. Family members who generally do their socializing as a group need only one invitation among them.
The cost of the invitation cards is irrelevant, or ought to be. Inviters should figure out how many cards they properly need to send and calculate their expenditures accordingly, rather than cutting corners on the mailing list because they bought cards they couldn’t really afford.