An electronic wedding invitation - Oh please !

June 6th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

Electronic Wedding Invitation

Well, we knew it was coming.  We have been pinging emails to each other for years, and christmas ecards are becoming ever more popular…. but a wedding einvite ?  It is time to make a stand and say no.  It is fair to say that wedding invitations have become more contemporary and less formal in recent years but there is no excusing the informality of an invitation that will ultimately end up in your guests trash folder when the wedding day is over.  American firms Evite and Pingg have introduced the electronic wedding invitation, primarily to the US market but of course, like the internet, it is open to anyone with a PC and a modem.

Wedding einviteI could have based this article around the theme that the first environmentally friendly wedding invitation has arrived.  This is one of the main selling points that the developers of these ecard sites like to portray and to a certain extent I have to agree because the absence of a paper card, envelope and stamp is certainly eco friendly.  However, I do not view a wedding invitation in the same vein as a birthday card, christmas card or any other kind of invitation.  It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to invite your friends and family to one of the biggest events of your life.  More importantly for your friends and family the wedding invitation means more than the paper and card it is made from.  It is a physical item that will be kept and treasured like a gift long after after the event and will trigger happy memories of your wedding for years to come.

Traditional wedding values have already been eroded over the decades but I think that this is one leap to far.  What next?  You may as well just set up a Facebook group and send all your guests an email to join it if they can make it.  Oh what the hell, they will probably be busy, why not do away with the invitation altogether and set up a webcast so your friends and family can watch the nuptials from the comfort of their own sofa.  Then, if they are busy or there is something better on the telly they can download and watch it later.   When you are back from your honeymoon why not upload your wedding video to YouTube so the whole world can comment on how you looked in that dress.

Rant over.  Let me here your opinion on the electronic wedding invitation.  Is this the future?

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  1. Comment by New age Nancy on 3 July 2008:

    I am preparing a wedding website for my friends which are both getting married for the second time in their lives. I sent the save the dates over email and everyone absolutely loves them. They are discussing the possibility of sending electronic wedding invitations, because it is a little more convenient, they already have had a test run at the junk folder of the email addresses, and when there is already so much going out as far an expenses are concerned it just makes more sense sometimes. The website offers online RSVP’s and they could go there to let them know both who is attending and what entrée they desire.

    A new age brings on changes as I am sure you know. The internet has opened up for a more paperless society and frankly an invitation can get lost in the USPS mail as easily as it can be re-routed to the junk mail folder of their email even in this day in age. If the bride and groom are not concerned about saving the invitation themselves, I do not believe anyone that will be attending their wedding will be hurt if they are not able to collect yet another invitation from the many they have probably attended in the past. I personally have been to several of my friends other weddings and have not felt the need to hang onto the invitations except when I saw a good idea for my own wedding. Maybe the trend to move more to email then snail mail is not in the proper etiquette. The proper wedding etiquette originated at a time when there was no internet, and the fact that more and more people are connected to it should launch proper etiquette into a new era. I’m not saying this will be an overnight occurrence, but people will eventually grasp the idea as a possibility.

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