The Invitations – Part One

The simplest and most proper form of invitation is a hand-written note requesting guests to join one in a celebration and which includes all the pertinent information needed so that they will know exactly what, when, and where they are celebrating. Wedding invitations have evolved from this kind of very personal and succinct invite to sumptuous packets of information a quarter of an inch thick! Still other brides send “e-vites” rather than paper invitations. If your wedding is small enough and intimate enough, a phone call could suffice. The point is there are many ways to invite someone to your wedding. I won’t be telling brides which way is most proper but my feeling is that brides should do a little etiquette research and then pick the kind of invitation that best suits her budget.

We looked at literally thousands of beautiful invitations when we were shopping around for ours. If money had been no object we would’ve chosen embossed fine linen paper edged with platinum, tissue paper inserts, and three silver-lined envelopes. The invitations would’ve been properly engraved in two colors and we might have even included some lovely laser “carving” on a cover page with vellum backing. Just imagine the fun we’d have trying to stuff all those envelopes one inside the other!

As we perused the gorgeous specimens we knew almost immediately that we couldn’t afford the prettiest ones that caught our eye, and those we might have been able to afford weren’t anything we really liked. There is no point in economizing if you don’t like what you’re getting. We also noticed that some of the nicest invitations were very simply made, so we decided to look at do-it-yourself invitations.

Before I go on I want to mention several decisions we made in our effort to economize which led to our decision to make our own invitations.

• Engraving is a beautiful and somewhat expensive way to print information on paper so that the letters are actually raised off the paper. While traditional etiquette demands that wedding invitations be engraved or hand-written, and we loved the look and feel of those engraved samples, we decided to risk the sneers of our more etiquette savvy guests and simply print the invitations. 

• That piece of tissue paper often found floating around in wedding invitations was meant to protect the engraving from rubbing off on the inside of the envelope. In other words, unless the invitations are engraved, the tissue is unnecessary, and that’s one less thing we had to buy and stuff into an envelope!

• The extra inner envelope adds a touch of elegance but, again, it’s unnecessary unless the invitation is delicate and needs added protection from rough mail handlers. Extra envelopes cost more and add weight that could mean more postage per invitation. It can also sometimes add difficulty to extracting the invitation itself. Eliminating the extra envelope meant less expense and work for our guests and us.

• We also decided against a response card for a number of reasons. One, we were having a buffet dinner so there was no need to keep track of dinner choices thus no need of check boxes for guests. Two, we assumed that providing our address and phone number would be all the information guests needed in order to respond. And finally, economy. Why spend the money on yet another unnecessary insert?

• Since we didn’t include a response card we also didn’t need a return envelope. There is no rule of etiquette that requires a bride to send prepaid envelopes to her prospective guests. Brides can save themselves a considerable amount of money by not enclosing stamped return envelopes. We assumed the best about our guests and were confident they all knew how to pick up a phone and call us, or find pen and paper, envelope and stamp, and write to us.

Tomorrow – How we made our invitations.