Letters to the Bride: What to Write and Who Should Write It

Nobody tells you what to write. That's the whole problem with Letters to the Bride — someone hands you a page, asks for something meaningful, and every sentence you think of sounds like a greeting card.

So here is what actually works, and who should be writing.

Who writes a letter to the bride

Traditionally it's the people closest to her, but there's no rule and the best books break it. The ones we see filled properly usually include:

• Her mother — almost always the letter she reads first, and the one she keeps coming back to
• Her father, or whoever raised her
• Bridesmaids and her closest friends — the ones who knew her before she met her partner
• Her partner, written the night before, sealed, read on the morning
• Grandparents — and if you can get these written early, do. They become the most treasured pages in the book.
• Her children, if she has them, however young. A scribble counts.

What to actually write

The letters people treasure are specific. Not "you'll make a beautiful bride" — she knows. Try one of these instead:

• A memory of her from before she was engaged. The odder and smaller, the better.
• The first thing you thought when you met her partner.
• Something she does that she probably doesn't know you've noticed.
• Advice you'd only give her, not advice in general.
• What you hope for her in ten years' time.

Write it by hand. Cross things out. Don't draft it first — the corrections are part of what she'll love about it in twenty years.

When to collect them

The most common regret is leaving it too late. Letters written in the fortnight before a wedding tend to be rushed, because everyone is rushed. Start six months out. Post the book around, or hand it to one person to quietly gather while everything else is happening.

If the wedding has already been, it isn't too late. Plenty of these get filled on a first anniversary instead, and they read just as well.

Somewhere to keep them

Loose letters get lost. That's the honest reason a book exists — not because it's prettier, but because in fifteen years the ones in an envelope in a drawer will be gone and the ones bound together won't be.

Our Letters to the Bride journal is linen bound with gold foil, personalised with her name, and made to sit on a shelf for a very long time. It's the sort of thing she'll take down and read on an anniversary, or on a hard day, or for no reason at all.