---
title: 'Sending your invitation in two languages'
description: 'For families who do not share one. What to translate, what to leave alone, and why one invitation works better than two.'
source: 'https://envelope.love/blog/invitations-in-two-languages'
category: 'Design'
published: '2026-08-09'
updated: '2026-08-09'
---

# Sending your invitation in two languages

For families who do not share one. What to translate, what to leave alone, and why one invitation works better than two.

This is the plain markdown copy of https://envelope.love/blog/invitations-in-two-languages, published by Love Envelope for machine readers. The page itself carries the same words.

Plenty of couples have two guest lists that do not read the same language. A grandmother in Tirana, a best friend in Berlin, half a family who will read the English fine and half who will not enjoy it.

The usual solution is two invitations, and it is the wrong one.

## Why two invitations goes wrong

Two of anything means two chances to be inconsistent. A time corrected in one and not the other. A reply deadline that reads as the first of August in one language and the eighth in another, because the date format flipped. Two links, sent to the wrong halves of the list by somebody forwarding in good faith.

And it quietly says something you did not mean. One of the two is the real invitation and the other is the translation, and everybody can tell which is which.

## What actually needs translating

Less than people assume. An invitation is mostly furniture, and the furniture is the part that translates cleanly.

- **Translate the labels.** The date, the venue, the reply form, the buttons, the section headings. This is most of the words on the page and none of it is personal.
- **Translate the dates properly.** Not the digits. The weekday and the month, in the right order for that language, which is not something you should be typing by hand.
- **Leave the names alone.** Yours, your parents, the venue. A proper noun is the same word everywhere.
- **Write your own sentences twice.** The line about how happy you are is the one part that has to be composed rather than converted, and a machine translation of it will sound like a machine.

## The two ways to do it well

**One invitation per language, same wedding.** Two links, sent to the two halves of the list, each complete and each in its own language throughout. Cleaner to read than a bilingual card, and worth it when the two groups barely overlap.

**One invitation, one language, chosen for the guest.** Better when the lists mix, and much better when families will be forwarding to each other.

Either way, keep the reply going into one place. Two lists of replies is how a head count goes wrong.

## Things that break in translation

- **Dates.** 09/08 is two different days depending on who is reading. Spell the month out.
- **Times.** Half past four is not written the same way everywhere, and in German it can mean half past three.
- **Formality.** Most languages have a formal and a familiar you. Getting it wrong is more noticeable than a mistranslated noun.
- **Length.** German runs about a third longer than English. A heading that fits on one line in one will wrap in the other.

## The dress code and the gift line

These two carry the most cultural weight and the least direct translation. Black tie means something specific in one country and nothing at all in another. Asking for money is completely ordinary in some families and startling in others.

Do not translate those two lines. Write them separately for each audience, saying what each one needs to hear. The wording for each is in [dress code wording](https://envelope.love/blog/dress-code-wording) and [asking for money instead of gifts](https://envelope.love/blog/asking-for-money-instead-of-gifts).

---

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