The Traditions Associated with Wedding Cards

Wedding cards, also known as wedding invitations, are used by many cultures around the world. wedding cards (Einladungskarten Hochzeit) are generally used as a formal way to invite people to a wedding event, and are normally mailed out between five and eight weeks before the wedding day. In western culture, it is the job of the mother of the bride to send out wedding invitations, often through enlisting the help of relatives and friends. However, in other cultures around the world and other times in human history, there have been many other traditions and customs associated with the sending and design of wedding invitations.

Prior to the invention of the printing press in 1447, weddings in England were typically announced by the Town crier, who walked through the streets and announced the event in a loud voice. However, even after this time the use of hand written wedding invitations was only a common practice among the nobility, mostly because they were often the only ones who could read and write. From 1600 onwards, there were a number of other changes to the way weddings were announced and planned, with metal engraving invented in 1662 having a big impact on how wedding invitations were designed.

From the time of the industrial revolution, there was an emergence of a mass market for wedding invitations, due to the availability of the printing press and the growing literacy of the working classes. Other cultures around the world have different traditions associated with wedding invitations, with some places using purely verbal invitations and other places using paper cards and formal letters. Wedding invitations are an important ritual in many cultures, as a symbolic act to announce the wedding event to the wider community.