The History Of Wedding Invitation Cards

Imagine, you are walking around the town center. All of a sudden, you hear someone yelling. Then you realize it’s the town crier! He’s announcing a wedding!

“Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Joyous news for all the town! Be it known to all hearers that Abigayle Mey Wickersham and Johnathan Elsworth Merriweather are to be married at three-o’clock on Saturday the eighteenth of May. Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Hear Ye!“

Congratulations! You are now invited to Abby and John’s wedding. The year is 1418. The printing press hasn’t been invented yet, and the majority of your town is illiterate.

This is the way that you were invited to a wedding. Anyone that heard the town crier announce this marriage would be invited to the celebration.

Preceding Gutenberg’s invention of the moveable-type printing press in 1447, the tumultuous tradition of oral wedding invitations was the norm for most commoners, continuing until the 1600’s and beyond. However, for those who were found to be among the nobility and aristocracy had begun commissioning monks during the Middle Ages to apply their expertise in calligraphy to elaborate hand-written invitations.

The culture of sending our marriage invitation cards in India shaped up only on the 19th century and this idea was borrowed from the British. The idea of printing wedding invitation cards was enthusiastically adopted by the Indian royalty, merchants and landlords of that time, eager to share colonial practices and etiquette. Wedding cards in India were thus a clone of the Victorian wedding cards. Till the1950s, wedding cards remained simple and restrained. Here is a example of a wedding invitation card for Princess Padmavati Raje of Gwalior printed in 1960. While it has a rich colour, it is very simple by today’s standards.

In the 1980s, the focus on wedding invitation cards seemed to be aligned with Indian ethnic designs and motifs. This trend was in tune with the Indian government’s promotion of folk art and handicrafts in a big way. Motifs and symbols used in the cards became “Indian”.In contemporary India, wedding invitations have become bold and innovative with varying materials, printing methods, presentation and packaging styles. They are no longer confined to small paper sizes. Bigger is now considered better in this day and age where flaunting your wealth is the in thing. We have all kinds of formats – scroll, books, cards in boxes, multiple folds, and innovative shapes! There are multiple invitation cards for different functions.The use of expensive materials like crystal and pearls have also meant that wedding cards nowadays (at the expensive ones from rich families) are not discarded! They will end up being preserved as they are valuable.

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