Christian wedding invitation wording
A Coptic wedding invitation follows its own conventions, and most of what is written online about Arabic wedding wording quietly assumes a Muslim one. This is the Christian shape, part by part, with wording you can lift straight onto your own invitation.
The opening line
The invitation opens with a short phrase before any name appears. The verse used most often is Matthew 19:6 — what God has joined, let no one separate — which is also the line the priest says during the ceremony. A shorter blessing does the same work and sits more easily in a design.
بنعمة الرب يسوع المسيح
فَالَّذِي جَمَعَهُ اللَّهُ لاَ يُفَرِّقُهُ إِنْسَانٌ — من متى ١٩: ٦
The الإكليل and the reception
A Coptic wedding is two events on most invitations: the الإكليل, the crowning service held in church, and the reception afterwards at a hall. They usually happen the same evening but in two places, and guests need both addresses. An invitation that gives only the hall sends people to the wrong half of their own evening.
لحضور مراسم الإكليل
بكنيسة [اسم الكنيسة]
يليها حفل الاستقبال بـ[اسم القاعة]
Put the church time first and the reception time second, in that order, because that is the order the evening happens in. If the two are on different days, they need two clear lines rather than one line with two dates in it.
Who is inviting, and the names
As with any Egyptian invitation, the families traditionally do the inviting. Naming both families together is the most common form and avoids the question of precedence entirely.
تتشرف عائلة [اسم العائلة] وعائلة [اسم العائلة]
بدعوتكم لحضور حفل إكليل ولديهما
[اسم العريس] و [اسم العروسة]
The closing line
One line after the details. A short blessing, or simply that the guest completes the day. Keep it to a single line.
وحضوركم يشرفنا ويسعدنا
لتكن بركة الرب معنا ومعكم
في انتظار مشاركتكم فرحتنا
Common questions
- Should the invitation say إكليل or زفاف?
- إكليل is the ceremony in church and is the more precise word for what guests are being invited to. زفاف or فرح is understood everywhere and is commonly used for the celebration that follows. Many invitations use both — إكليل for the church, and حفل الاستقبال or الفرح for the reception.
- Do we need to print the church address as well as the hall?
- Yes, and it is the more important of the two. Guests arriving at a reception hall while the crowning is happening in a church across the city is the single most common invitation failure at Coptic weddings.