Once you’ve determined where exactly your wedding—including your ceremony, reception, and dance—will be held, you’ll need to figure out whether your guests will need directions to your selected venue (or venues) in order to arrive at the right place at the right time.
Deciding Whether Direction Cards are Necessary
Sometimes, particularly if the entire wedding will be held in one location and if the location is quite easy to find (such as a well-known church on a major street in the city or town), directions are not needed; a simple address written right on the wedding invitation will suffice.
Other times, however, the bride and groom have chosen more than one venue (sometimes three—one for the ceremony, one for the reception, and one for the dance) for their wedding, and the various parts of the wedding may be held in hard-to-find places such as parks, beaches, backyards, out-of-town special venues, and other places “out in the country.” In these cases, directions are necessary. If you fall into this latter category, you will need direction cards for your guests.
A Closer Look at Direction Cards
Direction cards are separate cards containing drawn-out or written directions (or both) to the venue(s) of a wedding. They are used as additional inserts placed into envelopes along with the wedding invitations. Of course, direction cards can be included along with invitations to other types of events in addition to weddings. Essentially any event held in a hard-to-find location that requires invitations should include direction cards.
You can find direction cards that include only written directions, or cards with maps, or both—either separately or on one card. For example, direction cards can include written instructions on one side and a map or drawn-out instructions on the other, illustrating how to get to the venue(s).
In fact, you can find a nice assortment of wedding direction cards to choose from when you shop at online stores, including the designs with both the map and written directions on the same card. If you prefer a map only, written directions only, or both but on separate cards, you will find options in these categories as well. You will also find these direction cards to be very reasonably priced, which is also very helpful when you’ve got a lot of invitations to send out.
Make sure all your invited guests make it to your special wedding day or other planned event by providing some simple yet elegant direction cards that help them find your chosen venue(s) and arrive there on time, ready to begin the celebration!