Gone are the days when people used to send invites through post and few used to get and some did not. From booking wedding vendors to creating wedding invites, getting inspiration and even communicating with guests, you can do almost everything related to your wedding with ease and very fast.
All this could become possible because of the rise of the internet in recent years. Internet has played a massive role in making wedding planning process easy and a lot more cost-friendly. The Internet not only does things faster, but also things are more accessible with the Internet. And that’s the reason Online Wedding Invites has become the norm for couples these days. When everything is going digital, you don’t have to worry about your wedding planning.
Believe it or not, out of thousands of other preparation in your wedding, your wedding invites are equally important. And why not, your wedding invites are the first thing that your guests see and know all about your story. It should be worth it!
With the affordable presence of internet in daily lives, now you don’t need to visit card designers, going through numerous designs, finalizing the best one, then getting wedding cards printed in bulk and sending them to respective destinations. Altogether printed cards are a pricey affair!! So, here is an easy way, where all you have to do is to sit on your desk on a weekend and design your wedding invites all by yourself and surprise everyone with your creativity. The best thing is you can personalize your wedding card in your own ways, for instance, you can add a video clip, or a poem, or pictures etc. anything that displays your story in the best way.
Why online wedding invitation?
By opting for an online wedding invitation, you don’t limit yourself to a single card with same design and text. In an online wedding invite you have so much to do to make it more enchanting, like I said earlier, you can customize it and personalize it. You can add music, a video message or even an animation clip in the online wedding invite. The possibilities are endless!!
Also, online wedding invites not only offer you two a chance to explore your artistic side, but also they help you set up a virtual guest list with the option to RSVP. Whosoever will send their responses in yes will automatically be listed on the spreadsheet, thereby giving you an accurate headcount. Also, with online wedding invites you have an opportunity to add Google Map locations, making it an easy affair for your wedding guests to reach the venue.
Besides, online wedding invites are eco-friendly and is a great way to promote a nice message to the society to save the environment. Sending online invites is the first step to Green Wedding or eco-friendly wedding.
Last but not least, your online wedding invites are pocket-friendly. By sending online wedding invites you save a lot of money! Of course, traditional wedding invites are very costly affairs, first you need to get hundreds of professional-grade invitations printed for your wedding, and then posting them, which is again a cost. However, designing an online invitation does incur some cost, but that is almost negligible if compared to printed cards.
How to create online invites?
Believe it or not, but it is very easy to create your online wedding invite. In fact, you can create a wedding invite on your phone also, provided it’s a SMART PHONE. Isn’t it fantastic! All you have to do is to go to play store you will find a vast collection of invitation card maker apps there, and these apps are for both the iOS and Android phones. Howsoever you want to create your wedding invite it is absolutely your choice, you can either decide to send a text invite or a video invite to all your guests, across world for requesting them to save their dates for your special day. But there are certain prerequisites for it, what are those:
A Smart Phone or a PC
Nice Internet connection
Some free time
Creative mind
All the wedding related details
And a lot of enthusiasm……
Besides, there are many invitation card maker apps and online platforms where you can create your wedding invite without any hassle. These invitation card makers are easy to use apps, where you just have to enter the correct text and relevant information as per the occasion and few more elements to make your invite enchanting and captivating, and the job is done, bingo! You can change the theme and modify other elements of the invitation card as per your needs and requirements.
Well, if you are also planning to send an online wedding invitation this season, then here are 10 common mistakes that you should avoid in your online wedding invite:
1. Writing Etiquettes
A wedding invite can be written in several different ways, and how you word your wedding invitation depends on who is contributing to the wedding. For instance, if you two and both sets of parents are contributing to the wedding, then the wedding invite should start with “Together with our families”. However, if just the bride’s parents are contributing then the invite should start with the bride’s parent’s name. There can be several different scenarios to start a card and use correct wording in order to have a great online invitation. One should pay attention to this.
2. Sending Invites Too Soon or Too Late
Another mistake that most couples commit is sending their invites either too soon or too late. But quite often we hear that ideally wedding invites must be sent 6 – 8 weeks prior to your wedding day. Which is not an ideal timeline however.
Actually, your wedding invites are amongst the top priorities in the wedding planning. And there are so many aspects to it, such as; the first thing you need to consider is when your venue needs their final headcount. And this could be anywhere between 1 – 3 weeks prior to your wedding day. Then you need to have your RSVP date. It is always recommended to set RSVP date at least one week prior to when your venue needs their final head count. Because some of your wedding guests may miss to respond by the RSVP date. During this one week you can make calls to those who haven’t responded and can have a final head count for your wedding. Of course, why should you pay for the ones who are not attending the wedding? So, the ideal timeline to actually mail your wedding invites is 6 – 8 weeks prior to your RSVP date. This allows your guests good amount of time to respond, make reservations and plan their leaves accordingly.
3. The Right Information
While creating a wedding invite, it is crucial that the right information is mentioned on it. There are several ways your online invite can be worded. But it is crucial that the information or the details that are to be conveyed, should not be excessive or insufficient. Ideally a wedding invite will start with the names hosting or contributing to the wedding, then you can have a minimal verse, poem, or quote to bring about a warm feeling. After that information of pre or post-wedding events are mentioned, then comes dress code (if any), and a link to your wedding website and RSVP should also be mentioned. Apart from these important information adding too many details and making your wedding invite look fussy is not a great idea.
4. Online Wedding Invite Designing
Your wedding invite is always the first thing which your guests receive and get the first feel of what your wedding is going to be like. So, while creating or designing your online wedding invite, make sure you make you use proper elements and add proper color scheme to it. For instance, yours is a Green Wedding or a beach wedding, just incorporate a similar theme in your wedding invite too. But make sure you do not make it a colorful palette instead of a wedding invite. Mostly couples take all sort of inspiration from Pinterest, Insta, and from other media and in the process what all they like, they just want to incorporate it in their invite. Getting inspired from all the ideas from here and there is no problem but the problem occurs when you get confused or defocused because of that.
So, it is good to have clarity beforehand. Do a nice research and create an invite that can truly represent you two. Use neutral base colors, avoid too much of design and color, make it look like a wedding invite not a palette.
5. Long Hotel URLs
More often than not, the hotel URLs that you link to your wedding invite for blocking hotel rooms are sometimes extremely long and tend to look messy when included on the wedding details or accommodations insert. So, instead of having it on your wedding invite you can simply link your accommodations information and details to your wedding website. For instance, you can mention: “For further wedding details and information on how to reserve your room online, please visit our wedding website www.happyweddingapp/lizajess”
6. Not Including Entrée Options
Before you finally send your wedding invite online, find out from your venue or caterer if they need entrée options or choices ahead of time. This simply means that you will have to include the entrée selections on your response card so that your wedding guests can choose what they want prior to attending the wedding. Of course, you will never want to call each guest to find out what they want to eat!!
7. Incorporating Every Aspect of the Wedding In The E-vites
We understand that the excitement of big day sometimes make you do funny things, like – adding every aspect of your wedding into your card. Yeah, we know it’s your ‘big day’ and you just want to share all the details with everyone, but putting everything in your online invite is not wise at all. Like this you will only make your card look shabby and over-crowded at the end.
8. Registry Information
Believe it or not, putting your registry information on your wedding invite is also considered poor etiquette. Instead, can direct your wedding guests to your wedding website in place of putting in the invite. Simply link your wedding registry information to your wedding website. It’s that easy, isn’t it??
9. Typo Errors, Miss-spelled Information & Grammar
I can’t tell you how important proofreading is. Typo errors, misspelled names of your in-laws or family, mentioning wrong year in the invite, mismatching day and date in the invite, phone numbers with missing digits etc. must be avoided at any costs. Proofreading the wedding invite a few times before you send them out is a must. In fact, you can show your invitation to multiple people to proofread before you finally start sending it! When you review your invitation repeatedly to make sure everything is spelled correctly and accounted for, but because you have made it and have reviewed it many a times, it is actually easier for you to miss on some minor errors. However, when you show the invite to someone new, they look at it with a fresh pair of eyes; hence easy for them to catch something that you have missed. You can show your parents, your bridesmaids, your groomsmen or even a co-worker. Make sure there are zero errors in the wedding invite.
Furthermore, see that the correct “Wedding terminologies” are used in the invite. For instance, if you have to mention a location you should say it like, “Requesting the honor of your presence at…” or “We would be delighted to have at…” For details and information about hotel rooms and registry you can write “For further wedding details, please visit our wedding website www.happyweddingapp/lizajess”. Street address and details which are unnecessary must be avoided at all cost.
10. RSVPs
Creating wedding invites online also gives you an opportunity to have RSVPs easily listed on the spreadsheet, provided you choose the right platform. Let your online invite be a cake walk for the guests you are sending invite to. RSVP information can be incorporated in the invite itself so that your guests can send RSVPs without having to go through a long procedure. It should be easy and simple for them. It allows you to have an accurate headcount for the wedding day.
To pan out…..
Technology is to bring ease and comfort to all of us, but sometimes things can go erroneous, and can lead to faux pas. So, it is crucial that besides these pointers mentioned above, a wedding invite is accompanied by a phone call from you or from the person contributing to your wedding.
