How important is the humble wedding card? Your invitation card sets the tone for the grand festivities to come. Consider it a prelude of sorts that indicates to your guests the theme, spirit and style of your wedding. Not surprisingly, an increasing number of couples today are opting for cards that reflect their personalities and even the tone of their romance. And, coming to their aid are a new breed of tech-savvy invitation card designers who enjoy customising invitation cards to suit the client’s needs. Be it bespoke creations that are accompanied by the finest barfis and pedhas or quirky e-invites, there’s a little card for every kind of couple.
“Weddings today have become more chic, trendy and cosmopolitan,” says wedding card designer, Kasturi Shelar. “I see a lot of fusion between traditional and contemporary, and this comes across in my designs as well.” Originally from Bangalore, Kasturi is now based in the UK and helps couples shape their ideas when it comes to wedding invitations and stationery such as thank you cards, table place cards and wedding signs. Her work has been featured in Style Magazine UK.
From picking the right colours, fonts, design elements, paper and style to suit the couple’s vision, every effort is made to make the card unique. “Out of box ideas such as custom-designed boxes of sweets, cards with trinkets, scrolls, printed cloth, couple pictures in photo frames and even the classic cards in envelopes are getting fancier with special shapes, die-cuts, embossing and gold-leaf printing,” says Kasturi.
And, that’s not the end of it. Fun wedding merchandise has also become a part of the invitation process says Sruthi Yathindradas of city-based, Illustration Much. “A lot of requests we’ve received have had to do with creating the invite along with cute merchandise such as save the date fridge magnets, T-shirts with the couple’s image or gift wrapping paper. The idea is that guests take away more than just a memory from the event,” she says.
Invitations featuring illustrations are quite popular as well. “Many couples opt for completely illustrated and personalised cards that feature fun colours. The illustrations are inspired by their own courtships, for example the timeline of their relationship, their favourite places while they were dating or cities they've visited,” she says.
But, for the budget-bound or overseas couple the e-invite has become the favourite choice. If you think these are drab or impersonal, think again. “E-invites include everything from static JPEGs, customised power point slides, flash animations, web pages with detailed information about the wedding, animated GIFs and EDMs. These can be customised to fit the traditional tone of print invites and themes or can be casual and humorous to bring out the couple’s personality and relationship with the guests,” adds Kasturi.
Despite the plethora of options, couples still seem to prefer the traditional card in an envelope. However, these can be given a fun contemporary twist by way of design, colour and style.
