ANNOUNCEMENT CARDS.
The simplest way to announce an engagement is for each of the engaged couple to write short notes of announcement on the same day to each one’s relatives and near friends. All these notes are sent so that they will be received at the same time. They are written in the first person on dainty note paper, and the best form is the simplest. The character of the note must depend on the intimacy between the writer and the recipient.
A pretty and fashionable sequence to the announcement is for the bride to give a tea for the express purpose of receiving congratulations. She may mention it in her notes of announcement, and her fiancé may mention in his notes that she will be at home on a certain day at a certain hour. She should then receive with her mother or some older relative, and she should have some light refreshment provided for her callers. All her young friends will call, and all the relatives and near friends of her fiancé. The fiancé should be present at the tea, or he may come before it is over, but he should not formally receive with his betrothed.
Engagements are often announced in the newspapers.
Wedding announcements or invitations should be sent in envelopes addressed to the father and mother of the family, to the daughter or daughters (addressed as the Misses), and to each of the grown sons. All these invitations in their envelopes may be enclosed in an outside envelope addressed to the parents.
A wedding invitation or announcement card should always be addressed to both members of a married couple, even if the bride or groom who sends it is acquainted with only one.
The correct form for wedding announcement cards is as follows:
Mr. and Mrs. John Smith
announce the marriage of their daughter,
Anna
to
Mr. Frank Brown
on Saturday, October the twenty-second,
eighteen hundred and ninety-nine.
Washington, D. C.
The bride’s “at home” cards should be separate, but enclosed with the announcements, and should read as follows:
At Home
Tuesday afternoons in January.
125 West Fifteenth Street,
New York City.
Announcement cards should be sent out immediately after the wedding to every one on the bride’s and groom’s list. And, again, wedding announcement cards need not be sent out in any one’s name. The following is an example:
Married
on Wednesday, January the eighteenth,
eighteen hundred and ninety-nine
at St. Thomas’ Church
New York,
Margaret Baker White
to
William Barton.
When a bride is an orphan it is customary for the cards announcing her wedding to be sent in the name of one of her near relatives, or else they may read simply like the one given above.
Wedding announcement cards demand no acknowledgment from an acquaintance of the bride who lives at a distance, unless a “day” or “days” are mentioned on them, when it is obligatory to send visiting cards on the “day” or the first one of the “days;” otherwise, if one wishes to be particularly polite, one may send a visiting-card in acknowledgment of the announcement, but it is not obligatory to do so.
Wedding announcements are sent to friends at home as well as to those abroad, because the cards are supposed, not only to suggest remembrance, but to express a desire that the acquaintance should be continued after the name is changed.
The birth of a baby is announced in various ways, there being no especial rules of etiquette for making the announcement. Sometimes engraved cards bearing the baby’s name and date of birth are sent by themselves in small envelopes, into which they fit exactly; sometimes they go in an envelope with the mother’s visiting-card, and are written instead of engraved. These cards should be attached to the mother’s visiting cards by a piece of white baby ribbon, which is passed through a hole made in the top of both cards and tied in a tiny bow. They should be sent out when the mother is ready to receive calls.