Have you ever wondered where and why people started sending wedding invitations?

They actually started a long time ago all the way back in the 12th century which was before the ever popular printing presses had even been invented. The way people invited others to weddings back in this time was 100% word of mouth. They didn’t just invite people that they knew, although the towns were a bit smaller back then so they probably knew a lot of the people. They would walk down the streets of the city announcing their wedding as loud as they possibly could and anyone that could hear the announcement was automatically invited to the wedding. Obviously wedding didn’t cost as much back then.

Besides not having any mass printing capabilities, the main problem back in the middle ages was that most people could not even read. Typically monks were hired to make a wedding announcement and instead of writing to many words they would put on the family crest symbol to let the people know who was getting married. This reason is why you see so many crests or coat of arms on many of the invitations today. The crest is not just used for show and because it looks pretty, but back then it served a great purpose. Also, back in the middle ages the announcements showed your place on the social ladder because they were usually sent to only people in the highest classes.

By the early 1600s the printing press had finally arrived and could be used for wedding invitations. However, it was only used to announce marriages in the newspaper because the ink was smudgy and didn’t look good for invitations. Ludwig Von Siegen created the metal plate engravings in the mid 1600s and made it possible to for the common people to send out their own wedding invitations. The metal plate engraver is basically like a big rubber stamp that you might use today. There is only one down side to the metal plate engravings and that was the fact the ink would smear. The smearing was helped and greatly reduced by placing a piece of tissue paper over the ink. Not only did this help the smudging but looked great too.

Finally people started creating their own invitations by hand by the 1900s you could purchase your wedding invitation in bulk. They typically would only mail out the invitations a few weeks before the wedding. This is where the double envelopes came into place. People would use two envelopes because the horse delivery was so rough that if you only had 1 envelope on it might get ruined.

Now you might look at wedding invitations a bit differently and realize there is a lot of history and reasoning behind every little piece of the classic wedding invitation and not take for granted how easy it is to send out an invitation. Today you can easily get your wedding invitations printed and mailed in beautiful paper, ribbons, fonts and packaging.