A wedding details card is the small enclosure that carries the logistics. Hotels, parking, dress, the second address, a shuttle time. The invitation keeps the names, the date, the place and the hour. Everything that helps a guest actually arrive belongs on the other card. Call it an enclosure card or an information card if you like. Same job. It travels in the envelope so the invitation can stay readable in one glance.
The invitation cannot hold the logistics
I see this in the first notes a couple sends me more than any other briefing tangle. They have one card and a long list. The hotel block, the shuttle, cocktail attire, the barn that a map pin sends you past. They try to fit it on the invitation because they have not named a second piece yet.
The invitation has one job. It asks someone to come. Who is hosting, who is marrying, where, when. A guest should read it in a few seconds and know they are invited. Add a parking paragraph and the ask gets lost. Type shrinks. Margins vanish. People miss the time because they were hunting for a booking code.
That overflow is not a wording failure. It is a piece failure. You need a second card, or a place for the extra facts to live. The save the date, the invitation and the details card are three different moments. The save the date holds the calendar. The invitation holds the ask. The details card holds how to show up.
Ceremony order is a different overflow. Hymns, readers and the blessing belong on the day, not in the envelope. I wrote about what belongs on the programme, not the invite for that split. Logistics are this one. Hotels and dress are not the service. They are the week around it.
If the reception is at a second venue, that address is logistics too. A short afterwards line can sit on the invitation when it is only a name. A full street, a parking note and a gap of two hours need the enclosure. Guests should not have to squint to find dinner.
A website can hold the long version. I do not build websites. If you already have one, the card can point to it in one line. The card still earns its keep for guests who never click, and for the three facts they want in the car. Write the facts that cannot wait for a browser. Leave the rest online.
Reply cards are a separate piece. Do not pour RSVP lines onto the details card unless you have chosen not to send a reply card at all. Mixing the two makes both jobs fuzzier. One card asks them to come. One card tells them how. One card, if you use it, asks them to answer.
Hotels, parking and dress code
These three clog an invitation fastest. They also answer the question guests actually type: what to put on a details card. Put the facts a person needs before they leave the house, in the order they will use them.
- Write the hotel as a guest will use it: name, neighbourhood if it helps, a phone or booking page, the group code, and the date that rate ends.
- Give parking in one honest sentence: where the car goes, and whether that is a lot, a garage, the street or a shuttle from the hotel lobby.
- Set dress in the words you would say at the door, not as a fashion caption, so cocktail, black tie or garden party with grass-friendly shoes is enough.
One hotel is clearer than four. If you name a second, give it a reason: closer to the ceremony, or easier for Sunday breakfast. Do not write a travel essay. Do not quote a room rate. The hotel sets that, and it will move.
Parking wants the snag, not the cheer. If the venue shares a driveway with a farm stand, say so. If a shuttle runs from the hotel, put the pickup point and the first time on the card. Guests plan backwards from the ceremony. They need to know when to leave the lobby. A vague promise that a shuttle exists does not help them pack a bag.
Dress is kinder when it is concrete. Black tie. Cocktail. Garden party, jackets welcome. Smart casual is fine if your people already know what you mean. If they do not, add one line of colour or length. Skip “elegant evening attire.” Nobody can hang that on a hanger.
Adults-only sits here if it sits anywhere. Say it plainly and kindly, once. We kindly ask that this celebration be for adults. Little ones are dear to us; this evening is for grown-up guests. Do not hide it in tiny type. Do not apologise for a paragraph. One clear line on the details card is enough. The envelope names already tell people who is invited. The card explains the room.
Gift lists belong off the invitation. If you mention them on paper at all, this is the card. A shape that stays warm is: your presence is enough, and if you would like to give, our gift list is on the website. That does not read like a bill. The long list of shops can live online, where it can change.
Hosted extras, a Friday drink, a Sunday breakfast, get a short run of lines. Time, place, who is welcome. Not a full weekend programme unless the weekend is the event. Guests should see at a glance whether they are invited to the edges of the wedding, or only to the day itself.
Maps and when a QR code earns its place
A map earns its place when a phone will get the guest lost. A ranch with the pin on the wrong gate. A church with two campuses. A venue down an unpaved road after the paved one ends. Then a simple line of directions, or a small plan with the real approach marked, is a kindness.
If the address is ordinary and the pin is right, skip the map. A tiny grey street drawing that nobody can read is decoration. It eats the space the hotel code needed. Write the street, the city and any gate instruction in type large enough for a dashboard.
A canyon road is a good test. If the pin sits on the highway and not at the gate, print the last two turns. If a guest can type the venue name and arrive, let their phone do that work. You are not failing etiquette by leaving a map off. You are refusing to crowd a card with a picture of a road they will not use.
A QR code on an invitation earns a spot when it points at one useful thing. A map pin. The page that already holds the parking note. Not five codes. Not a code that opens a homepage and leaves them hunting. Print it large enough to scan in porch light. Put a written address next to it, because not every guest will scan, and some will try over a white tablecloth with a dark screen.
I keep this short on purpose. The code is a pointer, not the card. The card still has to make sense if the phone is dead. If the only fact on the enclosure is a square, you have moved the logistics into a place guests cannot hold.
Reception at a second place: put both names on the details card, with the gap named if there is one. Immediately following is a time. A four o’clock ceremony and a six o’clock dinner is a gap. Guests need to know whether to wait in the lot or go back to the hotel. Write that in words. Do not make them infer it from two addresses stacked with no clock.
I design the files. I do not print them, and I do not mail them. You send the print-ready PDF to whichever printer you like. The details card should travel in the same envelope as the invitation, tucked behind it, so the first thing a guest reads is still the ask. Extra inserts can change how an envelope is treated in the post, so weigh a stuffed sample before you buy stamps. The postage note I wrote for invitations walks through that mechanism without turning the enclosure into a maths problem.
Keeping the details card in the same family
A details card that looks like a different job will get treated like junk mail. Match the invitation. Same type family, same colour, same ornament if there is one. If the invitation is quiet lettering on cream, the enclosure is not a bright flyer with a new headline style.
I design custom invitations as a set when the suite needs more than one piece. The details card is usually the smaller sibling. Size follows the words. A hotel, a dress line and a website sit on a modest card. A weekend of hosted events needs more air, not smaller type.
Do not shrink to six point to win a smaller sheet. If the copy will not fit, cut copy or grow the card. Guests will not read a dense block in the car. They will text you from the driveway. Hierarchy does more work than decoration. A short heading, then the facts in the order a guest needs them. Where to stay. How to arrive. What to wear. Where to look for the rest. That order matches the week they are planning, not the order you thought of the items.
Paper should feel like the same object when someone lifts the stack. For most invitations I point printers at 110lb cover stock with an uncoated finish. The enclosure can follow that, so the suite does not mix a stiff invitation with a flimsy extra. You pay your printer directly. I do not mark up card stock, and I do not choose the shop for you. Any local print shop, or an online printer for a larger run, can cut both pieces together if you send both files at once.
If you already have a look from the wedding invitation collection, the details card should be drawn in the same hand. Personalised collection work still wants the extra piece to belong. A mismatched enclosure is how a careful invitation starts to look like two separate orders that met in an envelope.
Names of the card help a little. Details is accurate and a bit cold. For the weekend, or a few notes for you, can be warmer if it fits the invitation’s voice. Keep the heading short. The facts do the work. Do not title it with a joke your uncle will have to explain.
When a text carries the extra detail
Not every extra fact needs paper. A printed details card is for the facts that are true when the envelope goes out. Hotel codes. Dress. The second address. Those should not change after you post.
A parking lot that closed a week later is a text. A shuttle time that shifted is a text. Put a line on the card that you will send a note if plans move, and then send it. The card is the record. The message is the update. Do not use the printed enclosure as a place to freeze a fact you already know is wobbly.
Paperless guests never get the envelope. For them the details live in the texting-size file I deliver with the rest, or on the site the invite points to. Same facts, same order. Do not write a short version for the phone that drops the hotel deadline. That is the line people need on a Thursday night when they finally book the room.
Some households will keep the card on the fridge and never open a link. Some will only ever see the phone. Write once, then place it in both. I send a print-ready PDF at 300dpi with bleed and crop marks, a version sized for text messages, and a version sized for stories, in one shared folder. The enclosure can sit in that folder too, so you are not rewriting it the night before you post.
If the whole guest list is local and the venue is the church they already attend, you may not need a printed details card. Dress and a parking note can sit on a small extra, or in a follow-up text after people reply. Destination weekends and split venues almost always need the paper. The test is simple. If the invitation starts to look busy, the extra facts have outgrown it. Give them their own piece before you start shrinking the names.
The invitation is the ask. The details card is the courtesy that makes the ask easy to accept. Let each one do that one job.