To word wedding invitations for two grooms, you write three blocks of text: a host line saying who is inviting, a request line describing the wedding, and a details line with the date, time, and place. There is no rule that says one partner’s name comes first, so pick whichever order sounds best and use it everywhere.
That first sentence is the whole answer, honestly. The rest of this guide is the part where people get stuck — which family names go on the card, how to describe the ceremony without bride-and-groom language, and how to say something that reads like a wedding without sounding borrowed from one. Every example here uses two men’s names, because the templates floating around online mostly stop at two brides and leave you to improvise.
Table of Contents
- What You Need
- Step-by-Step
- Common Mistakes
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Do you say the wedding of or the marriage of when inviting guests?
- How should we word the RSVP line for two grooms?
- Can we invite plus-ones without making the invitation confusing?
- How do we handle different last names on the invitation?
- What if the ceremony and reception are at different locations?
- Where should dress code and meal information appear?
- Conclusion
What You Need
Before you draft a single line, settle these. Most of the anxiety around this topic comes from writing the card before deciding who is actually hosting.
- Both names exactly as you want them printed. Chosen names, middle names or no middle names, hyphens, suffixes. Decide once and write it down.
- Who is hosting. You, one set of parents, or both.
- Ceremony and reception details. Date, day of the week, time, venue name, city or town.
- Dress code, if you are setting one.
- RSVP method and deadline. Card, website, email or phone, with a date.
- Wedding website URL, if you have one, plus accommodation and travel notes.
Three terms come up constantly and are worth defining now. The host line is the opening text naming who is inviting. The name order is simply whose name appears first, and for two grooms it is a choice rather than a rule. The details card is the small insert that carries the RSVP deadline, dress code, accommodation, meal choices and gift guidance, keeping all of that off the main card.
Step-by-Step
1. Choose the invitation’s overall tone
Wedding invitation wording for two grooms follows the same rule as any other stationery: match the card to the actual day. If you are planning a black-tie evening with plated dinner, a formal card with spelled-out ceremonial lines fits. If the plan is a long table in a loft with a taco cart, a formal card reads like a joke nobody intended.
Four tones work well, and you can mix them. Formal uses request the pleasure of your company and reception to follow. Modern keeps the request but drops the ceremony phrasing. Casual uses contractions and first names throughout. Playful leans on inside jokes and language only your crowd will get.
The safest move is to write the whole card in one tone. A formal first line followed by a joke in the middle reads as indecision, not personality.
2. Introduce both grooms naturally
This is where the host line does its work. The classic phrasing puts one set of parents above the other, which does not fit a wedding between two men when both families are equally invested. Saying Together with their families sidesteps the whole problem: it credits everyone without ranking anyone. Forum threads on wedding planning boards consistently describe it as the least fraught line they used, and guests reported no objection at all.
Use the table below as a starting point and swap in your own names.
| Your situation | Host line to copy |
|---|---|
| You are hosting yourselves | Elias Renner and Micah Delgado invite you to celebrate their marriage |
| You and both sets of parents, listed in parallel | Mr. and Mrs. Renner and Mr. and Mrs. Delgado request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their sons Elias and Micah |
| One set of parents hosting | Together with their parents, Elias and Micah Renner-Delgado request the pleasure of your company |
| Stepparents included | Together with their families, including the Delgado and Renner and Baptiste households |
| Divorced or remarried parents | Together with their families, Elias and Micah invite you to join them |
| A widowed parent hosting | Together with their families, in memory of Samuel Renner, Elias and Micah invite you to celebrate their marriage |
| Children of the couple named on the card | Together with their families and their children, Elias and Micah invite you to celebrate their marriage |
On honorifics, you have more room than most etiquette guides admit. Mr. for both is entirely standard. Mx. works for a groom who uses it, or for one groom while the other prefers no honorific at all. Dr. if a doctorate is the title that matters to someone. Some couples skip honorifics altogether on a modern card, which reads as confident rather than careless.
If either groom is nonbinary or goes by a chosen name, print the chosen name. Nobody needs your legal documents, and the card is not a place to explain anything.
3. Write the invitation line about the wedding
This line describes the event. Gendered role labels are optional, so skip them unless you personally like the sound of them.
Lines that work for two grooms:
- request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of Elias Renner and Micah Delgado
- invite you to celebrate the marriage of Elias and Micah
- request the honor of your presence at the ceremony of Elias and Micah
- invite you to witness Elias and Micah as they exchange vows
- request the pleasure of your company at the celebration of their union
- invite you to join Elias and Micah as they say their vows
- ask you to join us in celebrating Elias and Micah
- invite you to stand with us as we exchange vows
- request the pleasure of your company as Elias and Micah are married
- join us for the marriage of Elias Renner and Micah Delgado
On the same-sex case specifically, you will hear the marriage of, as they exchange vows, and the celebration of their union suggested more than anything else, and those three carry the full weight of the day on their own.
If you want the card to feel looser, these work too:
Elias and Micah are getting hitched. Come celebrate.
Witness us say I do, then eat cake.
Elias and Micah invite you to the beginning of the rest of their lives.
Come watch Elias and Micah get married. Champagne at seven.
Two grooms, one date, one very good party.
Dinner, dancing and a marriage you should definitely hear about.
A word on elopements, since it comes up often. If you married somewhere private and are hosting the party afterward, say so plainly: Elias and Micah eloped in March and would love for you to join them for dinner and dancing. Guests find it genuinely charming rather than odd, as long as nobody has to guess whether they are invited to a wedding or a party.
4. Add the date, time, and location
Order of ceremony matters more than anyone expects. Date first, then day of the week, then time, then venue, then city. On formal cards, spell the year out in full: Saturday, the fourteenth of June, two thousand twenty-six.
If the ceremony and reception are in different buildings, name both with their own addresses. Vague lines like dinner and dancing to follow send people to the wrong address and then text you about it. On a card listing two venues, a small map or a line of directions is worth more than another decorative flourish.
5. Include RSVP, registry, and website information
The main card should carry only what a guest needs to arrive: who, what, when, where. Everything else belongs on the details card or your website.
Keep on the card: the RSVP deadline with a real date, one contact method, and the website URL. Move to the details card or site: dress code, accommodation blocks, parking and transit, meal choices and dietary requirements, children questions, gift guidance, and ceremony versus reception timing.
RSVP lines that read well:
Kindly reply by the first of May
Please respond by May 1 through the website on the back of this card
RSVP by May 1 at eliasandmicah.com
If the reception is adults only, one plain line does it: Please note that the reception is an adults-only celebration. No apology, no explanation.
6. Read it aloud and proofread
Print a proof and read the whole card out loud. Most wording problems are audible rather than visual: a host line that runs too long, two names crammed into one line, a phrase that needs three readings to parse.
Then check five things. Both names are spelled exactly as the couple goes by them. Every date, time, and address matches across card, details card, and website. Ceremony and reception details do not contradict each other. Honorifics are consistent. No gender-neutral promise sits next to gendered role labels.
Common Mistakes
Using a name order rule that does not apply. Older etiquette advice about the woman’s name always going first confuses a lot of couples and leaves them with no usable rule. Alphabetical, the name that sounds better read aloud, or simply the order you prefer all work. Couples sometimes alternate the order between the ceremony invitation and the reception card so each partner leads once.
Ranking one family above the other. The fix is structural, not diplomatic: list both families in parallel, or say Together with their families and skip the individual names entirely.
Letting a stepparent or absent parent be handled accidentally. If someone is not invited, do not name them. If a stepparent is hosting and deserves credit, include them explicitly rather than leaving it ambiguous.
Confusing ceremony and reception times. Two venues with two times need two complete address blocks.
Implied plus-ones. Naming individual guests on the envelope tells people they are invited alone. If everyone gets a guest, use household addressing or and family where the recipient lives with a partner.
Overloading the card. Two venues, a shuttle schedule, a six-item meal list and a dress code explanation will crowd the design until the important details disappear.
Explaining the wedding on the invitation. You do not need a line about why there are two grooms on the card, and you do not need to announce or defend the marriage. The wording names the couple and the event. That is enough.
One last tip from the etiquette side: surnames after the wedding belong to your announcement, not your invitation. Couples who plan to share, hyphenate, or change names tend to keep that decision off the ceremony card entirely, and let it unfold on its own timeline.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you say the wedding of or the marriage of when inviting guests?
Both work, and the difference is only in weight. The marriage of reads more traditional and formal, which suits a classic invitation. The wedding of is warmer and slightly more relaxed. Both describe the event directly, and neither one requires you to label either groom as the bride or the groom. If your card is formal, use the marriage of. If the day is loose, the wedding of is friendlier.
How should we word the RSVP line for two grooms?
Keep it simple and give a date and a method. Wording like kindly reply by the first of May, or RSVP by May 1 at your wedding website, covers it. One contact method is enough, and a digital RSVP is usually simpler for your guests to complete and easier for you to track. Include dietary requirements and plus-one details on the details card rather than the main invitation.
Can we invite plus-ones without making the invitation confusing?
Yes, and it mostly comes down to addressing. If you want everyone to have a guest, address envelopes to households or to and family rather than to individual names, since naming one person signals a solo invitation. On the card, a line noting that a plus-one is included on the reply card is clearer than an invitation-side note. If you want named-guest-only for the ceremony and an open reception, say that on the details card.
How do we handle different last names on the invitation?
Use whatever you will both be comfortable saying out loud. A couple can share one surname, hyphenate, keep both separately, or use chosen names, and all four appear on real invitations without anyone objecting. Print the exact form you have decided on and use it consistently across the card, details card, envelopes, and website. Leave post-wedding name changes off the ceremony invitation entirely and let that news travel on its own schedule.
What if the ceremony and reception are at different locations?
Print both addresses in full and give a time for each. Add a short line explaining the move, such as ceremony at four o’clock at one address, followed by dinner and dancing at six, or note the drive time and whether transportation is provided. Guests mix up split-venue weddings more than any other logistics detail, so a small map on the details card usually saves you a dozen text messages.
Where should dress code and meal information appear?
Both belong off the main invitation. The main card should carry only who is inviting, what the event is, when, where, and how to RSVP. Put dress code, meal choices, dietary requirements, accommodation, and parking on the details card or your wedding website, where there is room to explain without crowding the design. A one-line dress code note on the details card is enough for most weddings.
Conclusion
Start with the easiest part. Write both names as you want them printed, choose a tone, and read those two lines out loud together. Once the names and the tone are settled, the host line and the request line fall into place in a few minutes — and the sample wording above gives you a version to adapt rather than a blank page to stare at.
