everything you need to know about

How to Address Envelopes

Let’s start with this disclaimer: My best advice is to address envelopes in a way that feels appropriate to you and your event, and respectful of your guests’ identities. I promise that these guidelines and a bit of common sense will get you to that sweet spot.

These guidelines are going to be most helpful to someone who isn’t too invested in the most formal approach, but wants some structure around how to address envelopes, knows their parents or grandparents might have opinions, and wants to be respectful of each guest’s identity. If a particular “rule” doesn’t seem right for a specific person, change it. It’s totally okay to go informal for some guests but formal for others — it’s your event, you do you!

FIRST! GENERAL INVITATION MAILING ETIQUETTE

When you’re setting up your address list, each invitation — not each guest — gets their own line. Therefore, it’s important to establish two basic rules before figuring out everyone’s titles:

1. People at the same address but in different families (e.g., roommates) get separate invitations.

2. People in the same family but at different addresses (e.g., child is away at college) get separate invitations.

AND NOW, TITLES

Most of the headache around proper addressing is about getting guests’ titles right — those complicated rules born out of the tradition of addressing a woman relative to her relationship with a man. Gross. Remove that headache, and everything gets a lot simpler; addressing is based more on a person’s preferred pronouns, or, maybe, you omit titles altogether and then the only thing you need to know is each guest’s name. But, again, we all have that parent and/or grandparent and/or soon-to-be in-law who we love very much (except maybe for their attachment to old-fashioned rules), and so, we find ourselves looking for envelope addressing guidance. Here are some rules based in tradition, with some modern updates. (Everything’s written out below the flowchart, should you want more exposition.)

Everybody <18

No title is mandated by the etiquette gods for any person under 18 years of age.

Kevin McCallister
Matilda Wormwood

Girls <18

Miss is appropriate for girls under 18 if you’re being more formal.

Miss Alex Mack

Everybody ≥18

Mx. is the gender-neutral title afforded to all people 18 and older. If you don’t know someone’s pronouns, this title is appropriate to use.

Mx. Joe Fusco, Jr.

Men ≥18

If they don’t have a professional title, Mr. is it.

Mr. Inigo Montoya

Women ≥18

This is just for the purpose of determining her individual title, if she doesn’t have a professional title. More formatting comes into play when you couple her with a man (and I’ll cover that in the couples section, following).

If she’s UNMARRIED, SEPARATED, MARRIED BUT GOES BY HER MAIDEN NAME, or YOU DON’T KNOW HER RELATIONSHIP STATUS, use Ms.

Ms. Jane Tennison

If she’s MARRIED AND GOES BY HER HUSBAND’S LAST NAME, use Mrs. 

Mrs. Harriet Winslow

If she’s WIDOWED, both Mrs. and Ms. can be appropriate; it depends on her preference.

Mrs. Rose Nylund

Anybody with a Professional Title

Professional titles are a whole other bucket of worms. It’s generally advisable to use a professional title if the guest holds a doctoral degree of any kind, holds an elected position in government, is in the military, or is a member of a religious order.

If your guest is a DOCTOR — medical or not — this just got blessedly easy: Just use Doctor.

Doctor Doogie Howser

Anyone who holds an elected office in the GOVERNMENT can be addressed using The Honorable.

The Honorable Philip Banks

However, on mailing envelopes, top U.S. officials are addressed by their title, without their name.

The President
The Vice President

You can address anyone actively in or retired from the MILITARY with their full rank followed by their full name; you’d only include their branch on formal government or military correspondences, not social events (FYI weddings are social events).

Captain Ryan Clark

If you’re inviting someone who holds a government or military position and you want to double check any additional aspects of addressing them, I recommend perusing The Protocol School of Washington and (I was surprised to find) the Correspondence Manual for the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration; both provide really straight-forward guidance. If you want to check on military ranks, Military Factory is helpful.

FORMATTING titles + names for COUPLES

Now that you’ve got each individual’s title, we can figure out how to mash up the titles and names of anyone who’s part of a couple. I recommend just listing the two people each by their own title and full name, in any order you want — by whoever you’re closest to, alphabetically, or by rank. Most etiquette guidelines will agree, with exceptions really only existing for straight married couples who share a last name. And so, some notes on traditional guidelines and formatting follow.

Couples Who Share A Doctoral or Religious Title

If the couple shares a doctoral or religious title, you can have some fun with pluralization, or not:

Doctors Elliot Reid and John Michael Dorian
Doctor John Michael Dorian and Doctor Elliot Reid

Couples Who Share A Doctoral or Religious Title (And A Last Name)

Pretend Elliot took J.D.’s name when they got married, because I can’t think of any other married TV or movie character couples with the same titles (and I didn’t even watch Scrubs, it took research to make sure they get married):

The Doctors Dorian
Doctors John and Elliot Dorian
Doctor John Michael Dorian and Doctor Elliot Dorian

Couples With Different Titles

Traditionally, you would list the higher-ranking-titled person first. Then, follow with their current partner. Professional titles are always ranked higher than non-professional titles.

The Honorable Selina Meyers and Mr. Tom James
General Mark R. Naird and Mrs. Maggie Naird

Married Couples Who Share A Last Name And Don’t Have Professional Titles

I am of the firm belief that omitting one of just two people’s names on an envelope is ikky. If you disagree, you can follow the first example below; if you agree, you can follow the second and third examples. 

Mr. and Mrs. Gerry Quinn
Mr. Gerry Quinn and Mrs. Mary Quinn
Mrs. Mary Quinn and Mr. Gerry Quinn

FORMATTING titles + names FOR FAMILIES

Being specific on an invitation helps you avoid any awkward conversations about who’s invited (or not). If you’re inviting a whole family, I recommend listing out each member. Traditionally, you list the parents first (as if you were just addressing a couple), and on the following line, the children, oldest to youngest, without last names. Depending on your predilections, there are other less formal — but in this case, less clear — options.

Mr. Alan Matthews and Mrs. Amy Matthews
Eric, Cory, and Morgan
The Alan Matthews Family
The Matthewses

HOT GRAMMAR TIP

If you take away one thing from this page, let it be this: For the family examples directly above, nothing is possessive. This means there are no apostrophes!!!!! If you want to pluralize a family’s last name, just add an s or es to the end of it. (I am passionate about this.)

writing out mailing addressES

Okay! You figured out how to address your guests, and now you’re onto writing out their mailing addresses. Luckily, there’s just one simple rule to follow. Ish.

spell out everything…

• PROFESSIONAL TITLES: Dr. → Doctor

• P.O. BOXES: P.O. Box → Post Office Box

• STREET TYPES: Ave. →  Avenue

• UNIT TYPES: Apt. → Apartment

• CITY NAMES: NYC → New York City

• STATES: NY → New York

except

• Miss, Ms., Mrs., Mx., Mr. (not, for example, “Mister”)

• Washington, D.C. (not “District of Columbia”, though you can spell it out if you like; the mail will still get there)

• The quadrant of D.C. street addresses (“NW”, not “Northwest”)

• Some “North” streets in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY (some streets in Williamsburg get their mail more reliably if their address is listed as, e.g., “N. 6th Street” as opposed to “North 6th Street”; most guests who live here will have been frustrated enough by this in the past that they will specify it to you)

Formatting mailing addresses

Inviting people who live abroad? Here are the mailing address formats for countries I’ve addressed mail to so far:

SETTING UP YOUR ADDRESS LIST FOR your STATIONER

Write out the address for each invitation exactly as it should appear on the envelope. Bam. Easy! You can set this up in an Excel or Google Sheets file with different columns for the different fields — guest(s), street address 1, street address 2, city, state, zip (separate out the listings for addresses headed to different countries) — and send that right along.

Want to work from a template?

Download this Excel file (it uploads beautifully to Google Sheets) and get to work: DOWNLOAD ME »

sources + resources

Brides Magazine ∙ Emily Post ∙ Martha Stewart Weddings ∙ Military Factory ∙ The Protocol School of Washington ∙ Southern Living ∙ U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration

Keep up with current work on Instagram. FOLLOW ME »