Wedding Invitations

Wedding Invitations Hand Written Or Typed?

Hand written wedding invitations or printed wedding invitations? Which one to choose when the right time comes?

It is a hard question but the answer could be a simple one, and comes in the form of another question: just how much can you afford to spend with your wedding?

Because there are two possibilities from my point of view and I shall immediately detail them.

Let us start first with some little history of the wedding invitation.

Several centuries ago, in Europe, there was no custom of sending wedding invitations: people had no education and were too poor to even dare occupy their minds with such forms of entertainment. So, the wedding invitations were mostly verbalized, being issued out loud, sometimes by a town crier, and the ones who heard about this big news would also act as the guests of the wedding ceremony.

After the middle ages, the members of the English and French aristocracy would often send out invitations to the other members of the elite society and even to the royal families, with the purpose of celebrating a wedding.

Hand written texts were used only by the wealthy to announce their expensive wedding ceremonies. The wedding invitations wrote by hand are highly appreciated even today, but they are a bit too expensive so the suggestion would be that if you can not afford to buy them then put some effort and try to write by hand the ‘save the date’ wedding cards and the address on the double envelope when the time comes for you to mail the wedding invitations to your guests. It’s a just a form of appreciation and respect shown towards them.

On the other hand the printing press was considered as a life savior for the poor and facilitated the mass production of wedding invitations.

Back in the beginning of the twentieth century if people still couldn’t afford to buy wedding invitations, they had the possibility of using the local newspaper to announce a wedding ceremony. It is also the time when the engraving was considered to be one of the best options available for writing an invitation, since print could always be erased getting the words messy and dirtying the card with black ink.



Today, thermography is the most popular and used form of engraving and because of the raised letter effect, the simple, colorful or patterned wedding invitations become even more beautiful. Thermography is also known as imitation engraving or poor man’s engraving, but in comparison to the engraving process, the first uses an ordinary lead type washed with ink and so it facilitates the rapid and mass production of invitations of all kind.

My humble opinion is to always choose for the hand written invitations, if your wedding budget allows it, simply because they give a classic and unique feeling. You can either use the formal wording address or a less conventional one, but don’t forget that the writing will still remain.

Keep in mind these options and make a rapid choice while taking in consideration just how big is your wallet.