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The Organized Wedding Consultant Online Help: Working with the Address Book

Views Discussed: Households

Address books, invitations, and responses are all tightly connected (as you'd expect), and they were all designed with one objective in mind: to get the numbers right (projected attendance, required meals, required stationery, etc.) and the envelope etiquette automatically perfect (by which we mean perfect), with a minimum of typing. This part of the program can provide powerful time-saving services for your business -- services that are not available in any other software - but there's a fair amount to explain. Hang in there as you go through these instructions, and we think you'll be astonished by how much work this part of the software can save you.

The place to start is the "Households" view, under "Address Book" in the left-hand menu. We'll talk a fair amount about how to add households by hand, but when you're running the program from day to day, you usually won't need to type much -- there's a button labeled "Import" on the right-hand side of the "Households" view, and it can accept electronic address books from your clients in a wide variety of formats.

The following example uses the simplest, most common method of entering household and invitation information.

A Basic Example

1. Click "Add a Household" in the upper right.
   A "Household" is one or more people living at the same address, and households are the foundation of the entire invitation system. Within a household, you can issue invitations to multiple events (each directed to a different set of people within the household, if that's what you need), and you can even issue multiple invitations to the same event, if the people in the household shouldn't be invited together on a proper, formal invitation.
   
   The window that appears when you click "Add a Household" starts off with two pages (you can see the tabs at the top of the window), but it will have more pages once you start issuing invitations. This window holds everything related to a single household and ties it together so that the program can get the numbers and etiquette correct.
2. For the name of the household, type "Smith, John and Cindy". For the address, type
   17 N Main St. SE
   Somewhere, SD 12345
   For most households, you'll only need to type the people's names and their address, so let's leave it at that for the moment. Don't bother to write out the abbreviations -- the program will take care of it for you, as you'll see in a moment.
3. Click the "People in Household" tab at the top of the window.
   Now you're looking at a list of the people in the household. The software has filled in the list for you based on what you typed on the first page. The software has guessed at the genders of the two people. It has also guessed that they're married, and that they use "Mr. and Mrs." instead of fancier titles. For this example, assume everything's correct.
4. Click "Add an Invitation" at the bottom of the window.
   If you're planning lots of events for the current client, a small window will appear asking which event you'd like to issue an invitation for. Otherwise, a new page with a tab labeled "Invitation" will immediately appear. The new page has both John and Cindy checked off in the left hand-list, indicating that they're both invited on this invitation. On the right, the program has automatically created both outer and inner envelope text for the invitation. Notice that both the outer and inner envelopes use correct (albeit very simple) etiquette, and that all of the abbreviations in the address have been automatically spelled out for you.

With two clicks of the mouse, you've gone from typing the names of the people (just "Smith, John and Cindy") and their address to having correct formal wording for both outer and inner envelopes! Now, if you click "OK" at the bottom of the window, this invitation will show up in all the relevant lists in the program. That's all there is to it.

Having seen how the system works for one basic household, now we'll go back through the "Households" window, one step at a time, and see how it handles other situations. The bottom line is that it's just as fast and easy to handle complex situations and still get the etiquette right.

The "Basic Information" Tab

Naming Households

You can fill in the names of the households with anything you want. If you fill in the household names in a way that the software can understand, however, it fills in the "People in Household" list for you -- without your having to type people's names into the list. Here are some ways you can use this feature to save time.

• Use "last, first". The software understands the names in either order ("first last" or "last, first"), but the list of households is sorted alphabetically by whatever you type in, and having the list sorted by last name is usually more helpful.
• For couples with different last names, use both last names: "Smith, John and Wilson, Sarah". This notation allows the software not only to get the names right in the "people in household" list but also to guess her title ("Ms.") correctly so that you won't have to change it.
• Include children's names: "Smith; John, Sarah, Timmy, and Bobby" (notice the semicolon). The software assumes that the first two names are the adults, and the later names are children. (If they're over 18 and need adult titles, you can specify the titles in the "People in Household" list.) Including the children's names saves you time because the software guesses the children's genders as it adds them to the "People in Household" list, and although it sometimes guesses wrong, it's right more often than not. This procedure means fewer mouse-clicks for you in the "People in Household" list as you set the children's genders.
• Include fancy titles: "Smith, Cindy and Maj. Jack". Some people like to include these titles in the name of the household; some don't. On the one hand, if you include the titles in the name of the household, the software fills in the correct titles automatically in the "People in Household" list, thereby saving you time. On the other hand, if you have lots of Smiths, the titles could throw you off if you try to find a particular household in the alphabetized list.
• The software can handle a lot of information as part of the "Name of Household", so you don't need to worry too much about what you type:
• You can use "&" instead of "and"
• You can include suffixes (like "Jr." or "VII")
• You can include branches of military service (like "Smith, Col. Thomas, USMC")
• You can include middle names (like "Smith, Thomas Wilson")
• You can include all of the above at once ("Smith, Dr. Jane Patricia & Jones, Col. Samuel Joe Jr., U.S. Army")
• You can include "y" instead of "and" (like "Gomez, Juan y Consuela"). If you use "y", the software will assume the titles are "Señor" and "Señora", not "Mr." and "Mrs."
• Don't worry too much about these rules. They're just easy ways to save time, not requirements -- so if you come to a situation in which you have people with three different last names plus military titles, just type what seems natural. You'd spend more time trying to figure out what the software would understand than you would spend just fixing the "People in Household" list afterward.

If you think about it, that's a lot of information that the software automatically puts in the right place for you, just based on how you type the name of the household. Better yet, it's all information that goes into the right place automatically when you import a client's address book!

Please note, however, that the software only fills in the list of people for you the first time you switch from "Basic Information" to "People in Household". Once you've visited the "People in Household" tab once for a given household, any changes you make to the name of the household will not have any automatic effect on the list of people. The software works this way so that if you make changes to the list of people in the household, the software will not destroy you changes by automatically re-creating the list! If you need to change the spelling of a guest's name, however, you'll need to change it in the "People in Household" list, not just the name of the household.

Addresses

The software will expand all the abbreviations and any appropriate numbers when it creates the envelope text for you, so you can type the addresses using whatever notation is easiest. To move to a new line of the address, just hit enter. If you're worried about whether the software will get the abbreviations right, try it out. It's pretty smart. (A few examples of things that it understands: "15 St. James St." (where "St." means "Saint" the first time and "Street" the second time) and "7 LA CT" vs. "7 CT LA" (where the former means "Seven Louisiana Court" and the latter means "Seven Connecticut Lane".)) One thing that may seem slightly odd is the handling of state names: we use Crane's Wedding Blue Book as the foundation of our envelope etiquette (albeit supplemented with the 25th edition of Protocol and various tomes on military and State Department etiquette), and Crane's says that state names can be expanded or not based purely on the aesthetics of how the text looks on the envelope. So that's what the program does. If you'd like to override this feature, you can -- just keep reading.

Note: the above section on addresses doesn't apply only to addresses you type in yourself -- it also applies to addresses you import from a client's address book. Yes! The software can import an address book of six hundred addresses, each with sloppy, inconsistent abbreviations, and then automatically produce envelopes that are formally perfect for all of them, without you having to change a thing. When we said the features in this section can save you a huge amount of time, we weren't kidding.

Non-U.S. Addresses

Addresses outside the United States aren't a problem. If the software sees that you've entered a non-U.S. address or an address in Puerto Rico, it won't expand either the abbreviations or the numbers. We hope to teach the software French and Spanish in future editions (as well as the correct postal abbreviations for Canada and the U.K.).

Categories of Guests

There's a box called "Category" on the right-hand side of the "Basic Information" page. This category describes who the people in the household are guests of -- guests of the bride, guests of the groom's family, etc. Filling this information in is optional, but if you do, it's used in two different places in the program: in "Totals" (under "Invitation List" in the left-hand menu) and in "Guest Totals" (under "Responses"). These two views provide you with both tables and pie graphs of now many people are invited -- and how many people will most likely attend -- from the various groups. If you would like to divide guests into categories other than those we provide, you can: click "Set Guest Categories" in the lower right of "Households" on the main window. ("Households" is under "Address Book" in the left-hand menu.)

The "People In Households" Tab

People tend to have a lot of questions about this tab when they first see it. Here are the more common questions and answers.

Varieties of Mrs.
Q:  Why are there so many different buttons for "Mrs."? They all come out as "Mr. and Mrs. John Smith", right?
A:  Yes -- but only if the woman is invited to an event with her husband. The software can handle multiple events for each client, not just a wedding and a reception, and there might be events to which the woman will be invited by herself. As such, we need to know not just what she should be called when she is with her husband, but also how she prefers to be addressed when she's invited by herself. The different versions of Mrs. are designed to handle these variations.

Genders of Children
Q:  Why should I specify the genders for the children? They all just get listed on the inner envelope by first name, right?
A:  Yes, but only if the children are invited with their parents. There may be some events to which young adults will be invited by themselves, in which case their envelopes should be addressed using adult titles. In this case, the software needs to know their genders so that it can assign appropriate titles.

Bright Yellow (Ambiguous) Titles
Q:  I typed a household name of "Smith, Fr. John", and the "People in Household" tab is now showing bright yellow for the guest's title. What did I do wrong?
A:  You didn't do anything wrong. The software knows that "Fr." is an abbreviation for "Father", but that isn't quite enough information for it to create text for the envelopes. There are 15 different religious groups that use the title "Father", and many of them have subtly different etiquette for how their clergy should be addressed on formal correspondence. The bright yellow tells you the software needs more information. Double-click the bright yellow title, and a window will appear where you can select which religious organization this guest is part of. When you've selected an organization, the title will turn back to the usual colors, and the software will be ready for you to add an invitation.

Fancy Titles
Q:  I need to invite a retired lieutenant colonel from the Army Corps of Chaplains. I figured out "Smith, Lt. Col. John, USA" for the name of the household, but where do I indicate he's retired -- much less a chaplain?
A:  Just click "Other Title". In the window that appears next, there are checkboxes at the bottom where you can specify that an officer is retired or a member of the corps of chaplains. For a few other titles, the information that's requested at the bottom will be different: governors (for whom you need to specify a state), mayors (for whom you specify a town), members of the cabinet (for whom you specify a department), etc. Click "Other Title" and select a title, and any appropriate options will appear at the bottom of the window.

Question Marks
Q:  I entered a household name of "Mr. and Mrs. John Smith". When I go to the "People in Household" list, the program shows the wife's first name as a question mark. What's going on?
A:  Because the "Name of household" that you entered didn't include the wife's first name, the software doesn't know it. The program uses the question mark to indicate that it doesn't know her name. Fortunately, you probably don't need to worry about this issue: as long as the wife is being invited along with her husband, the envelope text doesn't use her first name anyway. Even if she's invited to an event by herself, you still might not need her first name -- if her title is "Mrs. (traditional)", she'll use her husband's first name ("Mrs. John Smith") even on envelopes addressed to her individually.

Really Fancy Titles
Q:  One of the countesses on the guest list is also a member of parliament. How do I handle her title?
A:  In spite of the 300+ titles that the software understands, we're afraid there are limits. For now, the answer is that you make her a "Mrs." in the "People in Household" list. When you add her invitation, check the box labeled "Let me change the envelope text". Then, before you start typing, you break out your copy of Titles and Forms of Address…

The "Invitation" Tab and Adding Invitations

The first thing some people ask about the "Add an Invitation" button (at the bottom of the "Household" window) is why we even have one. After all, we wouldn't bother to put people in the address book if we weren't going to invite them, right? This question has two answers.

1. If there are multiple events, everyone might not be invited to everything. In this situation, saying "If they're in the address book, they should be invited" isn't enough.
2. Even if you're only planning a wedding, you may need to issue multiple invitations to some households. An example would be an older couple living with an adult child (they get one invitation and the adult child gets another invitation), or a couple with three older children, each of which children might want to bring a date to the wedding (four invitations: one to the couple, plus one to each child -- so that each child's inner envelope can say "and guest").

There has to be a separate button for adding an invitation because there is no possible way that a set of checkboxes alone can record the information required to issue the invitations correctly.

When you first click "Add an Invitation", the software checks off everybody in the household as being listed on the envelope (except for single-gender events, for which it only includes adults of the appropriate gender). If inviting everybody on one invitation isn't what you want, you can simply uncheck the people who shouldn't be included, and the envelope text changes automatically. If you click "Add an Invitation" again, the people in the household who are not invited so far are checked automatically on the invitation that appears next. This feature makes it very fast and easy to issue multiple invitations to a single household.

The Relationship Between Invited Guests

On the "Invitation" tab, there's a box labeled "Relationship between invited guests". Usually, you don't need to do anything with this box -- it will automatically display the correct relationship. If it doesn't, you should try to find an accurate description of the relationship in the list because there are a few special cases where the different relationships result in different wording of the envelopes. Also, if an accurate description of the relationship isn't in the list, that's a warning sign that perhaps this collection of people shouldn't be invited together on one proper, formal invitation.

Changing the Envelope Text

No matter how clever the software is at making the envelope text formally correct, there are times when you'll want to change it to suit you. To do so, go to the "Invitation" tab and check the box in the lower right called "Let me change the envelope text". Then you can change the text to anything you'd like.

Putting Names on Invitations, not Just on Envelopes

For very formal occasions, guests' names can appear not only on their invitation envelopes, but on the invitations themselves. To turn this feature on for a particular event, go to one of the invitation-related views in the left-hand menu (like "Households" or "People") and click "Set Etiquette Options" in the lower right. You'll be asked what event you'd like to set the etiquette options for, and then you'll see a window where you can set the options. Check the box labeled "Names of guests appear directly on the invitations" and click "OK". The next time you edit a household, you'll see that the software has listed the correct, formal names to be printed on the invitations. (At the other end of the spectrum, you can also use "Set Etiquette Options" to say that an event is informal, and the software will create envelope text accordingly.) Your clients can even change their minds about the formality of the envelopes when you're halfway through creating the guest list, and it won't be a problem -- all of the text will update automatically to conform with the new etiquette settings.

The "Save-the-Date" Tab, the "Announcement" Tab, and Adding Notices

Directly beside the button labeled "Add an Invitation" is a button labeled "Add a Notice". (Notices are things like Save-the-Dates and Announcements, for which you don't need to track responses.) Adding notices works just like adding invitations -- when you click the button, you see a small window where you select what kind of notice you'd like to add, and then the notice simply appears as a new page in the "Household" window. You check the boxes on the left to indicate which people the notice will be addressed to, and the software shows you the envelope text on the right. To change the list of notice types from which you can choose (for example, if you need to add lodging packets as a separate mailing), go to any of the three views under "Notice List" in the left-hand menu (the three views are "Envelope/Label Text","Env./Label Printing", and "Listing") and click the button labeled "Notice Types" on the right-hand side of the list.

The "Responses" Tab

When you add invitations to a household, you'll see that one other tab appears in addition to the invitations -- "Responses". If you click this tab (visible at the top of the window), you'll see a place to record people's responses, meal choices, etc. This tab functions very much like the "Status" view under "Responses" in the left-hand menu. To find out how it works, see the help article "Working with Responses".

Invitation Envelope Tutorial

If you go to the list of households for the example client ("Bennet-Darcy"), you can get a thorough explanation of many specific situations simply by double-clicking each of the households in alphabetical order and reading the notes. The examples progress from the simple to the obscure.