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Catholic Wedding Invitations are unique in that they serve a functional purpose (to share wedding details with potential guests) as well as a spiritual purpose (to showcase how the happy couple is celebrating their love in the presence of God).
These Catholic Wedding Invitation templates from Truly Engaging offer an opportunity to combine expertly crafted layouts and high-quality graphics with your own creative messaging. While some designs aren’t overtly religious, they’ll still give you a solid foundation as you can build the invite of your dreams.
Browse the religious wedding invitation designs below, then check out our expert tips on Catholic invite wording and how to address your cards properly according to the church and modern etiquette.
1. Precise Promise
Precise Promise is an elegant and sophisticated design that’s perfect for your church wedding. Use a photo from your engagement shoot as the backdrop for the basic details of your ceremony and reception, then add your wedding website or a Bible verse on the back for a special touch.
2. Soft Sprig
Catholic Wedding Invitations tend to be a beautiful mix of modesty, elegance, and charm, and Soft Sprig is no exception. We love the geometric greenery-inspired patterning, and the tone-on-tone design makes this invite feel even more refined.
3. Quiet Scene
Quiet Scene falls into the category of modern Catholic Wedding Invitations thanks to the all-in-one design and the use of artfully mismatched fonts. The small keyhole picture frame is just right for a picture of you and your beloved, and the placeholder text highlights has plenty of room to mention religious elements like the nuptial mass.
4. Sweet Botanical
Floral-themed invitations can be big, bold, and colorful, or they can offer a more muted take on garden splendor. Sweet Botanical chooses the second route, using tone-on-tone coloring to create a design that borders on abstract but still feels well-suited to act as your top choice for a religious Wedding Invitation.
5. Spacious Idea
Catholic Wedding Invitations don’t have to be floral or ornate. Spacious Idea is inarguably modern, with the monochrome palette and graphic lines to prove it. The opening text, “We Joyfully Invite You,” could easily be secular or religious, leaving plenty of room for you to shape the wording to your liking.
6. Blossoming Arch
Charming Arch’s core design feature is a series of three lines that are deeply reminiscent of the arch you might find at the end of your wedding aisle. This one is simple and sans flowers, but that’s just right for a Catholic Wedding Invite that’s clean, modern, and yet still wonderfully welcoming for your church ceremony.
7. Flawless Photo
This all-in-one wedding invitation uses a photo of your choice as the main part of the design, giving you an opportunity to show off a Flawless Photo of your joined hands or an image of you and your future spouse snuggled up. You could also choose an image of your childhood church or another symbolic scene, like an incredible sunset, to shift the focus off yourselves and onto something bigger.
8. Grandeur Shine
Grandeur Shine can easily be viewed as a traditional cross Wedding Invitation that was given a 1920s-style makeover. The design is covered in intersecting lines that create interlocked cross shapes. It’s a way to honor your faith and your love of everything Art Deco at the same time.
9. Dreamy Sky
Ethereal swaths of blue, green, purple, and white, and sprinkles of gold, make Dreamy Sky a true revelation. You have ample space to share the details of your Catholic ceremony, so potential guests can appreciate both the artistry and the practical details included in your gorgeous invite.
10. Graphic Enclosure
Graphic Enclosure includes text that acknowledges both the happy couple and their families as wedding hosts. Overlapping geometric shapes form the bulk of this streamlined design, but you can customize the colors if the neutral hues used in the template aren't quite to your taste.
11. Love Infinity
In the Catholic faith, the infinity sign is a representation of God’s all-knowing, all-seeing power. His love and knowledge have no end. That makes Love Infinity a great choice for your Catholic wedding, and we think you’ll adore the elegant swirls and stately “We Do,” too.
Christian Wedding Invitation Wording
Catholic wedding invite wording follows a number of fairly strict rules, but those rules are more likely to be bent if the soon-to-be spouses are more progressive or if the ceremony itself includes more modern interpretations of traditional rites.
Generally speaking, your Catholic invite will tick several boxes:
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The bride’s name always comes first, followed by the groom’s name. The bride is listed using her first and middle names, while the groom is listed using his full name and a title, such as “Mr. Peter Henrickson.”
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Invitations are generally issued by the bride’s family.
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There is some mention of the Catholic portions of the ceremony, such as “Sacrament of Holy Matrimony” or “Nuptial Mass.”
On traditional Catholic Wedding Invitations, wording is often used to convey that the bride’s parents are the hosts. For example:
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“Mr. and Mrs. Julius Vernacki request your presence at the wedding of their daughter, Marianna Juliette, to Mr. George Verne, on July 23, 2023.”
Sometimes, all of the future spouses’ parents are represented.
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“Mr. and Mrs. Julius Vernacki and Mr. and Mrs. Randy Verne request the honor of your presence at the Nuptial Mass wedding of Marianna Juliette and Mr. George Verne.”
But modern Catholic weddings may have slightly different wording compared to what’s written on invites for a traditional Catholic ceremony. Today’s couples often foot the bill for their own weddings. Sometimes older couples won’t involve their parents at all, or parents have a more peripheral role. In those cases, it’s acceptable to change the invitation wording to reflect that the couple is hosting the wedding themselves.
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“Marianna Juliette Vernacki and George Verne request the honor of your presence at their marriage and the celebration of the Nuptial Mass.”
Couples can share the hosting duties with their parents, too.
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“Together with their parents, Marianna Vernacki and George Verne request the honor of your presence at their marriage and celebration of the Nuptial Mass.”
Modern church wedding invitations also tend to be less formal and focus more on equality. Parents may be listed by their individual names, such as “Mr. Julius Vernacki and Mrs. Elia Vernacki.” You’re also more likely to see divorced parents represented equally. If the Vernackis split up and one or both remarried, the invite could list the parents with their current last names, both parents plus their current spouses, or a single parent.
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“Mr. and Mrs. Julius Vernacki and Ms. Elia Nehula request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter…”
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“Ms. Elia Nehula requests the honor of your presence at the marriage of her daughter…”
If there are a multitude of names and the invitation is getting a bit confusing, you can separate parents’ names with the bridal couple’s names in the middle.
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“Mr. and Mrs. Julius Vernacki request the honor of your presence at the Nuptial Mass uniting their daughter, Marianna Juliette, and George Verne, son of Mr. and Mrs. Randy Verne.”
Some Catholic couples may underscore their religious wedding invitation wording by choosing a Bible verse for their wedding invitation. This verse can be used at the beginning of the invitation to set the spiritual tone for the rest of the text or at the bottom of the design to tie everything together.
Of course, Catholic wedding invitations should also include all the typical invite details too:
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The date and time of the ceremony
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The name and address for the venue/church
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Information that could help the guests prepare, such as “Reception to follow at [TIME] or “Updates available at [WEDDING WEBSITE URL]”
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If you’re planning a child-free wedding, this is also where you’d share a discrete phrase like “adults only, please” to convey your intentions
How to Address Your Catholic Priest on a Wedding Invitation
Proper etiquette dictates that you send your officiating priest a wedding invitation, even if he’s already agreed to officiate your wedding. It’s the polite thing to do even if you’re brand new to the church. But if you’ve been attending the same church for years (or even since childhood), your priest is even more likely to appreciate having a printed memento of your big day.
As for how to address the invitation, you’ll err on the side of formality no matter how well you know your officiant. The most commonly used title for addressing purposes is “Reverend Father,” as in “Reverend Father [FIRST AND LAST NAME]. However, there are other titles and ranks available to priests in the Catholic church, and one of those titles might supersede “Reverend.”
To avoid a faux pas, check with your priest or a church administrator to verify the preferred form of address.
Include Nuptial Mass on Your Wedding Invite
Catholic weddings are often longer than other ceremonies due to the inclusion of religious add-ons like communion and other components that make up a Nuptial Mass. Including these services on your religious wedding invitation is a wonderful way to give guests who might be unfamiliar with Catholic ceremonies a heads-up as to what they might expect on the big day.
As for the specific wording announcing the nuptial mass, you can incorporate detailed phrasing into the general test of your invite.
For instance, “Mr. and Mrs. Bert Jones and Mr. and Mrs. Jason Alexander request the honor of your presence as their children, Lisa Anne and Alberto Philippe, exchange vows and celebrate their Nuptial Mass.”
The inclusion of other religious language like “join hands in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony” will also help guests understand what to expect during your Catholic ceremony.
Plan Your Big Day with Wedding Stationery from Truly Engaging
Bring your Catholic wedding day vision to life with Truly Engaging’s dynamic collection of products. From Save the Dates and Wedding Invitations to programs and thank you cards, our customizable templates combine expert design and DIY flourishes to create printables that are uniquely you.
