Getting the Word Out
Inviting family and friends to share your wedding day is one of the most special moments you’ll have as bride-and-groom-to-be. You no doubt want to choose an invitation that expresses who you are as a couple, and also one that sets the tone for the wedding.
“Invitations create an impression,“ says Ken Mermer, president of Burque Jewelers in Nashua (603-883-7981). “If you have a wedding that’s going to be in a hayfield where everyone goes barefoot, you don’t want a formal, engraved invitation. But you do want that if you’re having a formal wedding at a fine hotel.”
An invitation for a holiday wedding might use green ink, says Jay Bishop of Wedding Invitations by Ann Bishop in Portsmouth (603-436-0246). “For a fall wedding, a bride might choose burnt sienna ink with a maple leaf motif. Really, anything goes.” Colored paper (even brown!), multiple layers tied with a bow, flower motifs — all are now available to a couple to create the wanted expression. Invitations can be further personalized with a favorite poem or passage.
Styles of invitations have grown to include one for the destination wedding. It may be tri-folded to allow space for all the information that’s needed for a wedding in a distant location, where there are activities for more than one day. Another contemporary touch is to send a “save the day” card to would-be wedding guests once you’ve located a reception site and know what day the wedding will happen.
Jay Bishop says 20 years ago the only choices for printing were engraved or flat. “Aunt Gertrude would run her hand over the printing and, if it wasn’t engraved, say ‘how gauche’.” No longer, Now, thermography is widely used. It’s done is much the same way as the traditional flat printing, but powder added to the ink gives it a raised look similar to engraving. Similar, but not identical. Ken Mermer says engraving is “crisper.” But, he adds, more expensive, too. Mermer points out the engraving plate can be framed as a beautiful memento.
The cost for invitations (and all the accompanying reply cards, etc.), Bishop estimates, can be as low as $70 per 100 or can go all the way up to $2,500.
