“Old-fashioned eyes? I hope you don’t mean mine, my dear? I like all the novelties.” — Mrs. Manson Mingott, The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
Once it did not need to be said that the principal purpose of a wedding invitation was to convey information and not express the combined personality of two unique individuals. Or maybe Etiquetteer just feels stuffy today; those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But the former is really more important. Wedding guests are likely to figure out who the Happy Couple is a lot more easily than where and when the wedding is to be and, even more importantly, what to wear.
It would be foolish for Etiquetteer to reject out of hand all the innovations of printing and technology of the last half century and more. But it’s a lot simpler knowing that you absolutely must have your invitation “engraved on fine, pure white or cream-tinted paper, having a smooth surface without glaze,” that “entwined initials or armorial devices in colors, gilt-edged sheets, etc., are not in good taste,” and that “Plain script is still the preferred engraving for wedding cards, though now and then very heavy block lettering is used, with an agreeable effect, or the old English characters.”* Whew, fewer decisions to make!
That said, Etiquetteer has been examining an archive of just such invitations from the late 19th century, and they are so identical as to numb the mind. Can we wonder, then, that what is considered Good Taste has evolved to incorporate use of “entwined initials or armorial devices in colors,” or newer forms of printing, or simpler forms of language?
The two most essential elements of any wedding invitation are Simplicity and Completeness. The recipient should not have to struggle to identify the Happy Couple (first and last names, please!), where they should be (addresses for both the ceremony and reception), and what they should wear (no novelty dress codes). After that, Etiquetteer really has to give Antoine de Saint-Exupery the last word: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
*From Encyclopedia of Etiquette, by Emily Holt, 1912.