Porcelain wedding anniversary invitations: 20 years

Twenty years ago you had a stationer, a seating plan, and someone looking over your shoulder checking the wording. Tonight it's the two of you at the kitchen table with a phone, a restaurant booked for fourteen, and a date you keep saying out loud to see how it sounds.

The job is smaller than a wedding invitation, and less forgiving. Porcelain wedding anniversary invitations go to the people who were there, who know your children's names, and who will spot a misspelled surname from across the table. Two hundred people don't need the details this time. Fourteen do, and they'll read every line.

Porcelain wedding anniversary invitations: what the wording needs

In French tradition the twentieth anniversary is the 'noces de porcelaine': china kept in the cabinet and brought out for the days that matter. Treat the invitation the same way. No bridal party to introduce, no ceremony to explain, no paragraph about how you met — everyone on the list lived it with you. What the page needs is the practical information, written properly and once. Guests don't need the story. They need to know when to arrive and what to wear.

• Both hosts' full names, spelled out. Not 'J. & M. Ferrer'.
• The exact date and time: 'Saturday 14 June, 7.30 pm', not 'the last weekend of June'.
• Full address of the venue, with a map link if it's a restaurant nobody in the family knows.
• One word for the dress code — 'chic', 'cocktail', 'garden party'. 'Come as you are' puts half the table in trainers.

Who gets invited to a twentieth anniversary

The rule that works: if someone couldn't name your children, or hasn't written to you in five years, they don't make the list. This is not a wedding re-run. It's a long dinner with the people who kept showing up, and the list should look like that. Twenty years is a good filter — the group that remains is the group worth booking a long table for.

Your original witnesses sit near you, not at the far end of the table. In France they are still 'les témoins', and the etiquette notices. In-laws and colleagues are invited as a couple and with the correct title: 'Monsieur et Madame' followed by the surname, no abbreviations. If there's a gift list, mention it gently or not at all — 'your presence is the gift' closes the subject better than a link to a shop.

At twenty years, etiquette is a short list, a name spelled correctly, and a time people can put in their calendar.

From a sealed envelope to a live link

What breaks etiquette isn't the format, it's the rush. Send the invitation three or four weeks ahead, not the night before. Keep the RSVP inside the invitation so replies arrive in one list instead of twenty separate messages; if your grandmother doesn't use a phone, print her copy and hand it over, and the link stays the original for everyone else. The link also keeps working after it goes out: change the time, the restaurant or the dress code and guests see the updated version, with no reprinting and no second message. You can add up to six of your own photos — the wedding day and the last twenty years — and they frame themselves. Try a design free, write the wording calmly, and publish when it's right: 29.99 EUR, one payment.