Guide
How to collect addresses for invitations and cards
Every card you send by post needs an address, and addresses are the one part of the job that lives in other people's heads. You can choose a design in an evening. Getting eighty addresses out of eighty people takes weeks, because it depends entirely on other people replying to you.
This guide covers how to get them without sending eighty separate texts, and what to do with the list once you have it.
Start with the list, not the cards
The common mistake is ordering the cards first and worrying about addresses after. It is the wrong way round: printing has a lead time you control, and address collection has a lead time you don't. Whichever occasion you are sending for, start collecting as soon as the guest list is roughly settled: you do not need to know who is coming to know where they live.
Collecting
Instead of asking each person and copying their reply into a spreadsheet, invert it. Mailbook gives you one link. You share it with everyone at once, and each person fills in their own address, which lands in your list already split into separate fields.
That matters more than it sounds. People know how their own address is written: the apartment number, the spelling of the street, which of two surnames goes on the envelope. You don't, and every address you retype is a chance to get one of those wrong and have the card come back.
Nobody you ask has to create an account, it works on a phone, and there is no limit on how many addresses you collect. Your list fills up as people reply, so chasing the stragglers means checking who is not on it yet rather than guessing.
Weddings
The largest list most people will ever collect, and the one with the most moving parts. Two things help. Run the link from both sides: your list and your partner's barely overlap, and asking separately roughly doubles the response in the first week. And ask people for the name they want on the envelope, rather than deciding for them: formal invitations are addressed to people by name, and couples with different surnames, unmarried couples and divorced parents all have conventions worth getting right.
If someone else is handling the invitations for you (a planner, a sibling, whoever has volunteered), export the finished list and send them the file. There is no need to hand over your login. Our wedding guide goes through the timing in detail.
A new baby
Birth announcements go out after the birth, but the addresses should be collected well before it. Once the baby arrives you will not want to be chasing your aunt for a postcode. Collect during the last months of the pregnancy, when you have time and people are already asking how they can help.
Baby shower invitations are usually organised by whoever is hosting rather than by the parents, so if that is you, share the link yourself: the guest list is yours to build.
Other occasions
The same link works for anything you post. Holiday cards, where the list is the same every year and worth keeping. A change of address, which is the one card people actually need to receive. Funeral notices, where the family is working to a short deadline and the address list is scattered across a generation. And in the United States, graduation announcements, which go to a much wider circle than the ceremony itself.
Getting the addresses onto envelopes
Three ways, and the right one depends on where you are having the cards printed.
- Let the card printer do it. Most card websites will print the recipient's address straight onto the envelope if you upload your list, and many include it in the price. Export your Mailbook as Excel or CSV and hand it over. Cleanest result, but last-minute additions are awkward once the order is placed.
- Print your own labels. Buy label sheets and export your addresses as ready-made label sheets. More flexible (you can print one more at any time) and the cheapest option if you already have a printer. Our label guide covers the sizing.
- Write them by hand. Genuinely the nicest, if your handwriting is up to it and the list is short. Nobody has ever regretted a hand-addressed wedding invitation. Most people regret it somewhere around envelope forty.
Keep the list
Whatever the occasion, you will need the same addresses again sooner than you think: thank-you notes after a wedding or a birth, holiday cards later that year. The second hunt is worse than the first, because by then the momentum has gone. The list stays in your Mailbook.
Getting started
Over 100,000 people have used Mailbook to collect more than five million addresses. It is free, there is no limit, and the people you ask never sign up for anything. Have a look at the getting started guide, or read more about your online address book.