Wedding announcements are intended to let people know that you are now married. The responsibility for creating them typically falls upon the bride or her family and there are a number of ways of completing wedding announcements.

Newspaper wedding announcements are quite common. If you choose to announce your wedding in the local newspaper, you’ll want to contact the offices of the publication for information on how to do this. Check the paper’s wedding page as well since many newspapers print their guidelines for wedding announcements right there. Different publications will have different ways of going about this, so it’s important to look into each one if you plan to submit wedding announcements to more than one newspaper. Some papers charge a nominal fee to publish wedding announcements and some will do it for free. Some will also print photographs with the announcement if you so desire. Again, check with the individual publication to see what they will and won’t do.

The information to include in a newspaper wedding announcement will depend on how much you want to print and how much the paper is willing to print. Some papers will ask that the bride fill out a simple form, others will ask that the information simply be submitted. Some of the information that you will want to consider including is the bride’s full name, the names of the bride’s parents and their place of residence (the city or town, not their street address), the names of the bride’s grandparents (both sides of the family), what school or college the bride attends or graduated from, the bride’s occupation, the name of the groom and his place of residence, the names of the groom’s parents and their place of residence, the occupations of the groom’s parents, names of the groom’s grandparents (again, on both sides), where the groom attended school or college, the groom’s occupation, and details about the wedding itself such as the date and location, the names of those in the wedding party and their relationships (if any) to the bride or groom, where the couple has gone for their honeymoon, and any other information you may deem pertinent or interesting.

Personal wedding announcements are also appropriate to send. These will typically be sent in the names of the bride’s parents and will go to friends, relatives, and acquaintances who were not invited to the wedding itself. It is customary to send these wedding announcements immediately following the wedding date. If the wedding were held on, say, Saturday the first, the wedding announcements should be in the mail on Monday the third.