The days when wedding invitations had to be engraved on white card with silver or black writing are long gone. Nowadays the bridal couple have a huge choice of designs and almost anything goes. So much choice in fact that you can even do away with the printed invitation altogether and go electronic if you want to, carrying on all your wedding correspondence via e-mail. Let’s have a look at some of the pros and cons of electronic compared to printed wedding invitations.
Pros of electronic
Electronic invitations are much cheaper than printed invitations. You will only have to pay for the design: no paper costs, printing costs or postage costs to budget for.
Electronic invitations are quick to create and instant to send out, so are a great time-saver if your wedding preparations are of the last-minute variety.
Saving on paper is a positive move if you are trying to keep your wedding as green and environmentally friendly as possible.
You can link your electronic invitations to your wedding website and make it easy for guests to find all the extra wedding info, such as directions to the venue, wedding gift lists and so on.
Cons of electronic
You will need to make sure that you have current e-mail addresses for all your guests. Follow up if you don’t get an RSVP, just in case the e-mail never reached the recipient.
Electronic invitations may be read once and then lost in the morass of an overfull inbox or accidentally end up in the recycle bin. You may need to send out reminders if you haven’t heard back from all your invited guests.
Older family members may not be very computer-literate and may find it hard to get their heads around e-mail invitations!
There is nothing to display on the mantelpiece or save as a keepsake for those who enjoy the old traditional way of things.
Printed invitations still have the monopoly on style, tradition and quality, so electronic invitations tend to put across a more modern, quirky, casual image, which may not be what you are looking for.
Pros of printed invitations
However convenient and clever electronic invitations are, we still love printed invitations. They appeal far more to the senses than a mere image on a screen. Think about the texture of handmade paper, the feel of good quality card and embossed or engraved writing. Printed invitations certainly win on style and lasting appeal.
There are many more design possibilities for printed invitations - endless papers to use, 3D folding and embellishments such as ribbons and pressed flowers. You can get really creative and end up with mini works of art.
Beautiful printed invitations are likely to be displayed on the mantelpiece keeping your wedding day firmly in the mind of the recipient.
Cons of printed invitations
The cost - printed invitations can be expensive, though they don’t have to be if you choose a simple design and affordable paper. But if you choose a whole range of wedding stationery, including save the date cards, thank you cards, RSVP cards with matching envelopes and so on, all on beautiful card stock, it will definitely make inroads on your budget. Then there’s the postage to bear in mind for all of these.
You will need to find out up-to-date postal addresses for all your friends and family - something that in these days of cell phones and e-mail we often don’t have at our finger-tips.
So if you’ve weighed up the pros and cons and still can’t decide, why not go for a combination of the two? Have your actual wedding invitation printed and posted, but use e-mail for all the other communication - send out save the date e-mails, ask guests to RSVP by email and send out thank you e-mails afterwards.
You can co-ordinate the design of printed invitation and wedding emails and make sure that style and tradition are complemented by modern convenience and a green ethos. Have your invitations printed on recycled paper using vegetable inks and you can still feel eco-friendly and responsible!