The (Wedding) Invitation

Once you decide on the type of wedding you want, consider how to invite your guests. For example, people living in parts of Africa would receive this glad news from a family friend, making his rounds with oral invitations. In the United States, the engraved invitation may seem to be the classic, but it's interesting to know there are other traditional options, too.

As with so many wedding traditions, the exact origin of the invitation is obscured by time. However, it is generally believed that in olden days of the English countryside, before the ability to read became widespread, invitations were shouted out by "bidders." These were old men hired to announce the details of the wedding. Since most early wedding celebrations were spirited community events, all who fell within earshot instantly became part of the sizable guest list. This form of invitation was commonplace for the ordinary folk, and it endured until the eighteenth century, when invitations published in newspapers became popular.

When did the written invitations begin? Starting in the Middle Ages, wealthy folk -the gentry or nobility - were the first to have the means to purchase precious written invitations. Many were beautiful works of art, inscribed by monks. This tradition stemmed from the practice of monasteries maintaining records of royal marriages. Using the same exquisite script that illuminated much of their calligraphic works, the monks wrote out the invitations. Should you decide to have your invitations written in a calligraphic hand, not only are you creating a thing of beauty, you are also honoring one of the oldest wedding traditions.

At the same time that monks in European monasteries were toiling away with their calligraphic nibs, in North America, native Indian tribes were highly conversant with the art of the invitation. The hospitality of Native-American tribes is legendary. Smoke signals were their formal request followed up by personalized inscriptions on birch bark.

Excerpt from "A Bride's Book of Wedding Traditions" by Arlene Hamilton Stewart