Whilst I wasn't the little girl dreaming about her wedding, there were a few things I was fairly certain about. The church, the dress colour, and the invitations. Only two of these have gone according to plan.
My family make their own greetings cards, and always have done. When aunt J got married, she made her wedding invitations (although it's a standing joke that I never actually got one!). I knew I was going to make our wedding invitations.
Well, I suppose I have, but not in the way I'd imagined. I had plans for a gatefold card tied with ribbon with a vellum insert. I even ordered card samples (luckily these were free). Then I realised the invitations need to go out in January to give everyone time to book rooms (if not booked a month before the wedding the rooms are released). We arrive back in the UK on January 19th. That means I either have to make the invitations in a bit of a rush, or I have to have them ready before then.
I didn't bring my craft stuff to NZ, as it didn't make sense. I'm not buying a whole load of new stuff, and I'm not posting all the invites from here. So that leaves me with buying them, or being "tacky" and sending evites.
I have no idea why evites are tacky, but plenty of people seem to think they are. Apparently a 'formal invite sets the tone for the day.' What if the tone of the day isn't formal? One bridal forum commenter said 'it's never tacky saving trees, and saving money is just a bonus,' which I definitely agree with.
Other commenters seem to think an email is likely to be ignored, whilst an invite will be kept forever. I think these are people reluctant to live in the digital age - it's much easier to find an email than a card, and keeping cards creates clutter.
Another odd comment is that the invite contains all the information people need. How much information can you fit onto an A5 card?! It's obvious from these same wedding forums that guests want more information than a bride can possibly fit on an invite, so even if we send invites it is for prettiness only. The info would still need to be on the wedsite, and the only people that can't look at that (grandparents) already know the info and are being driven around by my dad and my uncle.
So, after a bit of internal wrestling, I have made my peace with evites. It's not like we're sending a mass email - there will be a photoshop designed invite attached to a cleverly worded email, which will contain a link to the wedsite. Then if anyone 'loses' their invite, we can just send them another one!
2 comments:
I think evites are fine. It might be a bit less formal, but it's certainly more practical. A few of our friends have sent out paper invites but referred people to their websites to RSVP, which is far more sensible than expecting everyone to find a stamp and remember to post their replies. The only thing I can think of from a guest's point of view is that I like scrapbooking, so paper invites are fun to keep, but if any of your guests are the same they can always print out your invite :)
I'm a scrapbooker too, although I do a lot of mine digitally now. Glad you think it's ok, maybe it's just the WIC that think it isn't?!
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