Invitations. They're a rather inescapable trapping of weddings; despite my overall defiance of the MIC, I have to tell my guests where and when my Betrothed and I are getting hitched. It's kind of a logistical necessity.
Now, in my experience, invitations for festivities of any kind are fairly straightforward. You tell your guests where to go, when to arrive there, who's throwing the party, and what the occasion is. You request that they kindly RSVP. You put the invite itself on pretty paper. Or in an Evite. Maybe I'm missing some great cultural trend, here, but invitations always strike me as being there for one sole purpose: conveying critical logistical information. They're fact-based. The pretty paper is value added, right?
Apparently not. The MIC, in all its magnificence, has a lot to say on the matter of the invitations.
Your wedding invitations are your guests' first glimpse into your wedding style -- from the overall vibe and aesthetic to specific color combos and the level of formality. So it's important to make them count!
Ok, am I the only person who has looked at a wedding invitation and thought, in this order, "Oh, how nice! So-And-So is marrying What's-Her-Face. Ok, it's in September. It's being held an hour away from where I live. Let me fill out this RSVP card and tell them I'll be there with bells on. Oh, and this is on pretty paper. Now, where's my calendar? I need to write this into my schedule..."
That is to say, never -- not once in my 30 years -- have I dissected a wedding invitation for a glimpse into the happy couple's theme, aesthetic, vibe, or color preferences. NEVER. Do people really do that? Are there actually people on this planet who, upon receiving a wedding invitation, sit down, ignore the children who need to be fed/dinner that is burning on the stove/dogs who need to be walked/papers that need to be written/bills that need to be paid in order to analyze the invite? Do they put on their special Wedding Invitation Reading Glasses and make assessments like "Their preference for the color green denotes their commitment to having an environmentally-friendly wedding. I see here that the font in which they were printed leans to the right, which means they're forward-leaning people"? And for the love of all that is holy, why don't these people have lives?
There's a lot to research, but lucky for you, we have thousands of wedding invitation photos, tips, and advice for you to get the perfect wedding invitations. First, browse wedding invites online that suit your wedding style.
A lot of research? But...why? As long as I have the pertinent information needed for the invite, why does there need to be a lot of research? Can't I just print these puppies out and be done with it?
And as for invitations that suit my wedding's style...my wedding's style can be summed up in one sentence: my Betrothed and I are getting married. That's our style. Great! Finding wedding invitations that tell people we're getting married is going to be a cakewalk!
Once you've browsed all our wedding invitation photos -- from traditional to formal and even unique wedding invitations -- it'll be time to find a local wedding stationery designer.
I don't even know what a wedding stationery designer is. Is this a job title that people actually hold? (And do they get business cards? If so, they design those, too?) My exposure to wedding invitations has been through a) receiving them for other peoples' weddings, and b) occasionally seeing couples oogling overpriced invitation designs at Papersource. The bottom line is, though, that I'm disinclined to hire someone to do something I'm perfectly capable of doing myself.
I've heard the argument that DIY invitations aren't as pretty or as polished as those produced by these wedding stationery designers.
That's true.
But so what? The worst that can possibly happen is that I save money and wind up with perfectly acceptable invitations that people don't swoon over as soon as they open them. My invitations will never turn into wall hangings in other peoples' homes. Nobody will look at them and be catapulted into a fit of covetous hysteria because they want invitations that look exactly like mine.
And I'm cool with that. The fact remains: no matter how much money I spend or how stunning the invitations are, people will only keep them until the wedding has happened. After the guests have gotten to the venue on time and on the right day, all invites meet the same fate: the great paper recycling bin in the sky. The bride and groom or their family members might decide to keep an invite for posterity, but they're the only ones. Your friends will not keep them. Your cousins will throw them away. Your great uncle twice-removed will make a paper airplane out of it so he can torment the caretakers in the old folks' home.
So with that in mind, my Betrothed and I plotted out our invitation plan: Target. DIY invitation kit. Printer. Post office. Done.
