Who is hosting, how formal it is, and who exactly is invited — the three questions every invitation answers, worked through for the families people actually have.
Every wedding invitation, however it is phrased, answers three questions: who is giving this event, how formal will it be, and who exactly is welcome. Get those three right and the rest is typography. Get one wrong and somebody's mother notices. This is the working reference for getting them right — scenario by scenario, with the full wording shown, including the circumstances most etiquette guides tiptoe past.
Formal invitation wording runs in a fixed order: host line (who invites), request line ("request the pleasure of your company" for a secular venue; "request the honour of your presence" traditionally reserved for a house of worship), couple's names, date and time written out in full, venue, and reception line. Numbers are spelled out — Saturday, the twelfth of June — and nothing is abbreviated. Less formal weddings may relax any of this; the order still serves.
The rule that resolves nearly every divorced-parents question: each host gets their own line, and no line joins people who are not a couple. An unmarried, remarried, or divorced pair never share an "and."
A deceased parent cannot host — an invitation is issued by the living — but they belong on it. The cleanest form moves the honor to the couple's side of the wording:
Same forms, no special forms — that is the point. Order the names by whatever sounds best read aloud (alphabetical is the graceful tiebreak), and choose host lines exactly as above.
When two traditions share the ceremony, the wording should not privilege one — "request the honour of your presence" belongs to both or neither. For bilingual invitations, resist the temptation to translate line-by-line down the same card; give each language its own full panel (facing pages, or front and back), each written the way that language actually writes invitations. A translated idiom reads as a translated idiom in both directions.
Never on the invitation itself. The envelope does this work — it names exactly who is invited, and no one else. Back it up on the website FAQ ("We love your children, and this evening is for grown-ups"), and let the RSVP confirm the count by naming each expected guest — an online RSVP that lists the invited names does this without a single awkward sentence.
Lower right corner of the invitation, or the details card: Black tie · Cocktail attire · Garden formal — heels sink, flats win. If you invent a dress code, define it on the website; a code guests must decode is a code they will get wrong.
Wording done, two decisions remain upstream of the press date: when it all mails, and what the words will be set in — for that, start with the complete guide's tour of methods and materials.