Addressing married couples with both first names

You only put the woman’s name first if unmarried. We did Mr. John and Mrs. Jane Doe.

This is probably considered inappropriate but we dropped the mr and mrs and just went with the names of the couple - Jane and John Doe for example. Haven’t heard any complaints yet haha.

Married couple (wife took husband's name) - Mr. & Mrs. James Smith

Married couple (wife kept her maiden name) - Mr. James Smith & Mrs. Jane Jones

Married couple (wife hyphenated her name) - Mr. James Smith & Mrs. Jane Jones-Smith

Unmarried couple (living together) Mr. James Smith & Ms. Jane Jones

An unmarried couple that does not live together, you can either send the invitation to one and give them a plus one, or send them each an invitation.

We did Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Doe for the majority of our invitations for married couples with the same last name. I hate when things are addressed as Mr. and Mrs. John Doe, a woman doesn’t lose her first name when she gets married, pet peeve of mine (even if that is proper etiquette). We did go the more traditional route for older family members.

View Quoted Comment Yeah, this is what I’m planning to do too so that way I don’t have to deal with the whole wording etiquette hoopla! But if your wedding is very formal or you just really want to include Mr and Mrs, I’d go with what the first poster suggested of doing “Mr. John and Mrs. Jane Doe.”

I’m not a big fan of the mr and mrs his name either, so we just decided to drop honorifics completely—same as Meaghan.

Dropping the honorifics is probably the safest way to go. If you do Mr. John and Mrs. Jane Doe, you'll offend both the old-fashioned ones who think "Mrs. Jane" indicates a divorcee and the more modern ones who think that you should use Ms. to avoid designating women by their marital status. If you do Mr. and Mrs. John Doe, you'll offend the ones who think that erases the woman.

As for the order, I'd put the one you know better first.

View Quoted Comment I like this and respect this and will probably badly do the same. I’m keeping my lastname after marriage so I wouldn’t want to assume anyone’s title and worry about getting it right or wrong.

View Quoted Comment As someone who is keeping her name.
I’d be pretty annoyed if someone called me Mrs Tamsin Surname, makes me think I’m married to my grandfather.

OP just drop the titles, we are

I dropped titles too. I personally love getting things address to Mr. and Mrs. S but I know it offends some people and I just couldn't handle trying to figure out how everyone would like to be addressed. If anyone had an issue with it, we did not hear of it. I only used Mr. or Mrs./Ms. if it was a single invite like for my widowed grandmother. It got so long to say Mr. and Mrs. Jack and Jane Smitherson that I did not like the way it looked.

I understand there is etiquette here, but I had a hard time feeling to need to follow it as it doesn't actually affect someone's experience of the wedding.

We did Mr. John and Mrs. Jane Doe. I wouldn’t want to be Mrs. Hubbys name Sanders, so I wouldn’t address my guests that way.

Thank you all so much for your input! Our wedding isn't overly formal (not white tie or black tie event), but formal enough (cocktail attire/semi-formal event) so I wanted to keep with tradition, but I think I might just do without the honorifics like a few have said they're doing. I would hope someone wouldn't show up in jeans because they got a John Doe, rather than a Mister John Doe haha.

What threw me off regarding the woman's v. the man's name first was this website: Married with Style - Whose name goes first

They also make a note saying this (NOTE: Traditionally, a woman’s name preceded a man’s on an envelope address, and his first and surname were not separated (Jane and John Kelly). (So I wasn't sure where the Mr. and Mrs. would be placed in that scenario)

As a side note, I don't think I've ever over analyzed something so much in my entire life LOL

Can you just say Mr. & Mrs. Doe instead?

I did without the honorifics on the majority of my invites. I hate being addressed as Mrs. anything (even though it's technically correct bc I did take my H's last name). H has a few traditionalists in his family that would be offended if it wasn't there, but even though I did Mr. John and Mrs. Jane Doe. I refuse to use Mr. and Mrs. John Doe because I hate being addressed that way.

View Quoted Comment

YES! THIS A MILLION TIMES OVER!

Ask a person how they would like to be addressed. I prefer Ms. First Name and Last Name despite my marital status. I know people who don't like to use the title Dr as they are humble people and hate status. It's sad to me that men and women don't know what "coverture" is and women don't know history. Women and men can change their names to be anything in 2019, but calling a person Mrs. Husband's First and Last name seems offensive and ancient to me. Women's history needs to be taught at the high school level for a more equal society. I will never do business with a company or donate money to a charity that calls me by Mrs. HusbandsFirst and Last Name.