With the wedding season in full swing I thought it would be helpful to discuss the main stationery that we get orders for over this busy period. There is a lot to go through for this topic so I have decided to split it into 2 weeks. This week I will take a humorous look at the history, and next week I will go over all the facts, pointers and tips we have gained.

I thought I would start of with a story that everyone here should be able to relate to

A few months ago I was going through the mail, the bills were stacked to my left with the junk mail to my right I was coming to then end, when I came across my name painstakingly scrawled across a red envelope.

After the initial worry that my creditors were getting smarter and this was just a ploy to make me feel bright and cheery before dropping a lawsuit in my lap. I decided to open it up. Inside I found a card with more calligraphy and several images of angels singing.

I open the card up only to find out that my best friend is about to marry the girl of my dreams, the icing on the cake is that they wanted me to come and watch and share in the happy event!!!

OK so maybe your experience is not exactly like that, but you get the point!

For hundreds of years people have been amazed at the delicate beauty that comes with a perfectly made wedding invitation.

How did it start?

Recently an archaeological dig in deepest, darkest Peru turned up evidence for what is believed to be the first Wedding invitation painted on a cave wall, translated it says “Getting Married, bring meat,”

So maybe I stretched the truth on that one, but when you consider that wedding tradition is something that humans have participated in since that dawn of mankind, it’s certainly possible.

The earliest traces I could find for the wedding invite starts in medieval Europe. In the early days before the invention of the printing press it was common for weddings to be announced by word of mouth. Often the town crier would announce the wedding, and anyone and everyone within hearing range was automatically invited and forced to spend several weekends shopping for toasters hoping that the lucky couple would be registers at the market 2 towns over.

This system worked fine, until on one dreadful night after copious quantities of mead Johnny-cum-serf decided to get up on the banqueting table and start to recite from the complete works of Shakespeare, hoping to catch the eye of the lords youngest daughter. Of course this being forbidden Johnny met an inglorious end under the crushing weight of an axe, although the whole village talked about how it was the only way he would get a-head in life (sorry that was awful I know).

The nobility scratched their heads long and hard to come up with a solution to this, as they still needed to marry off their sons and daughters, and they wanted to announce it to everyone important. The solution was surprisingly simple.

During the dark ages of Europe if you were not being burned for witchcraft you were trying to avoid catching the plague. As a result, between the burning and the disease catching there was simply not enough time to pick up a book and learn to read. This gave the nobility their answer, written invitations that could be hand delivered.

The nobility approached the church and asked them to provide scribes to write the wedding invitations for them. The church opposed the idea, saying that they needed their scribes to complete the little pamphlets that they wanted to hand out at airports and bus stops. After some gold had exchanged hands, the church accepted the order.

In no time at all it became the height of fashion to pay huge sums of money in order to have these monks craft hand drawn and illuminated invitations for the special day. The invitations were then dropped off directly to the intended guests by a horse courier.

Soon once again Europe was in the grip of sweeping changes, first by Johannes Gutenberg and his printing press and then by Martin Luther and his protestant reformation. One of the main things that Martin did was to translate many Holy Scriptures from Latin into more common languages such as English and French and with the help of the new printing press he was able to mass-produce them and teach the common folk how to read them.

In this way, he didn’t have to drop his pamphlets about Jesus just at the airports and bus stations. He could now go from house to house from the crack of dawn and had them out individually!

With literacy rates in Europe steadily growing, man eventually read about light bulbs and left the dark ages altogether. He was now well on his way to enlightenment.

Wedding today

The origins of the commercially printed wedding stationery can be traced to the period immediately following World War II, where a combination of democracy and rapid industrial growth gave the common man the ability to mimic the life-styles and materialism of society’ elite.

Today, wedding invitations are limited only by the size of your wallet. Many people still like the idea of traditional wedding invitations, and many still opt for traditional wedding text,

Jack and Jill getting married. Bring Meat.

Isn’t it great seeing how much we have evolved?

Formal wedding traditions have greatly relaxed, and because of this some religious traditions have also relaxed. Some people even enjoy the idea of mixing different religions and traditions together to come up with completely new ceremonies of their own. Even though this seems like a great idea, it might be worth avoiding, if only to stop the inevitable arguments between several different Gods on who bought the holiest toaster.

These days wedding invitations can be nearly anything, the most memorable one I can remember, is one that was delivered in several puzzle pieces and you had to put the puzzle together to get the invite. The invitations can be hand delivered, posted, or tied to a brick and thrown through a bay window, like with so many things the possibilities are endless.

Before I finish there was one other piece of information I Stumbled across and I thought that you might find this interesting. The tradition of having the bride and her family be responsible for the wedding and invitation arrangements has remained pretty much unchanged since the beginning of time. This could be because a wedding is about a union between a man and a women, but it is also a day when a woman can throw the party of her dreams and be the complete centre of everyone’s attentions for one night.

On the other hand, it could just as easily be that a wedding planned by a man would probably involve a lot of beer and some kind of sporting event, and no self respecting bride would ever allow her wedding to be turned into one of my college parties.

Whatever the case, this tradition is still common today, so if possible make sure the wedding invitations is mailed from the bride’s address. In this way you can guarantee maximum toaster to guest ratios.