How do I refer to two married women on an invitation?
More specifically, listing our deceased mothers on our wedding invitation in a modern style. Is the following acceptable?
Mr. and Mrs. Edward and Betsy Smith
request the pleasure of your company
at the marriage of
Michael Andrew Grant
and
Dale Edward Smith
sons of the late Mmes. Kathleen Grant and Blanche Smith
Combining our mothers with Mmes seems to work best as it reduces the dwelling on death that would result from the late Mrs. Kathleen Grant and the late Mrs. Blanche Smith.
In invitation etiquette, Mmes is rarely ever mentioned as married women are linked with their husbands. And Mssrs. and Misses are always spoken of in relation to siblings (either young, bachelor, or spinsters) who cohabitate (most likely to address the envelopes. However, by extension I have seen these titles used the way in other contexts: “My lawyers are Mssrs. Brown and Johnson” or by logical extension “My favorite authors are the Mmes. Bronte and Austen.”
– Michael Grant
Dear Mr. Grant:
1) RE: MMES.: Plural honorifics are not used on invitations. The style is to give everyone their own name as a unit. Rather than Mmes. Grant and Smith, we writeMrs. Grant and Mrs. Smith … each gets their name a a unit.
2) RE: Mr. and Mrs. Eddie and Betsy Smith is really awkward because it is an attempt to mix [formal] honorifics with a [casual] forms for the names.
** Formal has rules that enable us to be consistent across a wide variety of names from all sorts of hierarchies and cultures
** Casual is more of a freestyle, everyone does however they want to
** Mixing them creates a mess.
3) The Best Option is to dispense with the honorifics if you want to include both parent’s names. Without the mixture of styles it become rather elegant:
Edward and Betsy Smith
request the pleasure of your company
at the marriage of
Michael Andrew Grant
and
Dale Edward Smith
sons of the late Kathleen Grant and Blanche Smith
4) RE: A modern style
In my book (used everywhere from The White House to Canadian Parliament) I show forms for addressing only two types of couples:
Couples using the same surname
Couples using different surnames
Rather than different forms for married couples, unmarried couples, gay couples etc., invitations are issued to couples or individuals. If two individuals don’t present themselves as a couple — they are issued individual invitations. It’s really simple.
– Robert Hickey www.formsofaddress.info
