A quick question...

[Laundryangel]

I am supposed to be handing out 30 invites to DD'S birthday party tomorrow & am having a wobble about the wording. Should it be "you are invited to X's and Y's birthday party" or "you are invited to X and Y's birthday party". I've forgotten the rule and whilst my first suggestion looks right on the two invites I have done so far, it doesn't on the third! The "you are invited to" bit is preprinted so I can't get around the use of the possessive. Thanks!

I think the first reads better: it's the party of X and of Y, so both X and Y need to be possessive. I think we would happily use the second form in speech but when written down a bit of symmetry or whatever you want to call it looks more attractive. It's definitely not wrong to do it that way.

By the way, some pedants will raise an alarm at "invites" as a noun instead of "invitations". It's doesn't seem that big a deal to me, but as this is PC, you might get further comments.

You've probably written them all by now and gone to bed....