7 ms·
In my opinion, this makes the whole process very impersonal. I invited people to my wedding because I care about them and wanted them to share that day with me.
by andrewguenther 10y ago
In my opinion, this makes the whole process very impersonal. I invited people to my wedding because I care about them and wanted them to share that day with me. Although it was a lot of effort, I was happy to make save the dates, invitations, and hand write thank you notes to every singe one of them. If you're not willing to do that, then you're inviting too many people in my opinion.
- davidcbc 10y agoNot everyone cares about the same things you do. I used paperless post for my wedding because it was easy, free, and physical wedding invitations are not important to me or my wife in any way. Nobody complained, it took a couple hours to get everything set up the way we wanted it, and within a few days we had around a 90% response rate. Only 1 person RSVPed as no so it doesn't seem like anyone got the impression we didn't care about them
- mstade 10y agoI'd love it if I didn't get dead tree invitations. I have nowhere to put them and I feel bad throwing them away. And also of course, dead trees.
- pjc50 10y agoI've kept every wedding invitation I've ever received. They take up a small corner of my "personal memories" shoebox. I don't really understand how you can have nowhere to keep them unless you're living out of a suitcase.
- beart 10y agoHow often do you pull those old wedding invitations out and what value do you get by holding onto them?
- pmarreck 10y agoI think the fundamental dilemma here is between the "packrat" and the "thrifty liver" I have a box with all my old handwritten letters from just before the Internet and email exploded. I rarely take it out, but when I do, it's kind of neat to show my niece and nephew.
- pjc50 10y agoRarely. Certainly not more than once a year; if I'm adding a new one to the box, I might leaf through the old ones. But it's a nice sense of joy and continuity, and I can of course know that they're there without having to even open the box. The emotional value like most mementoes varies over time, but trends gradually upwards. (I do wonder if all the people who say "collect memories, not things" have more vivid, eidetic memories than I do; mine can be a little fragmentary without help.)
- criddell 10y agoFor things that I want to remember I take a photo and then get rid of the item. I began doing this when my kids started school and would bring home new art every day. I love that they made a portrait of me by gluing macaroni to a paper plate then covering it in glitter, but I don't necessarily want to become the caretaker of that masterpiece forever.
- cableshaft 10y agoJimmy shows dad his new masterpiece. "That's great Jimmy! Now let me get my camera..." SNAP! "There, now we've got that memory forever. Now open the trash can and throw it away!" I know you don't literally do this, but that's what your comment made me think and it gave me a chuckle. How long do you usually hold on to them?
- criddell 10y agoMy kids are teenagers now, so the flow of glitter and glue art has slowed considerably. There was no rigid routine. Things would go in a pile and periodically the pile would go to the recycling bin.
- madshiva 10y agoSeriously? I received maybe 3 cards of weeding and more thant 30 for my birdthay. I kept them all too. We can save tree when there's purpose like printing for reading an email, for invoice, etc. because they don't give or add any value, but my handmade card for my weeding, if you throw it is disrespectful, because If I had invite you, it's that I take care of you. (BTW I made only 15 invitations.)
- criddell 10y agoI wouldn't assume disrespect. Material items don't hold the same meaning or power for everybody. I used to move a lot and if you expect me to carry something you gave me from place-to-place for the rest of my life, well that could be seen as disrespectful as well.
- cat199 10y ago> Nobody complained, it took a couple hours to get everything set up the way we wanted it, and within a few days we had around a 90% response rate. Only 1 person RSVPed as no so it doesn't seem like anyone got the impression we didn't care about them wow - any idea on the conversion rate? if so, how many sigma are you talking here? did you do any a/b testing for future iterations? With this level of customer focus, it is easy to see why noone complained, which by the way is totally a great metric for measuring ROI.
- warent 10y agoDoes this post add any value or just pointlessly assert your disgust in a passive way? Because from my perspective it seems like it's the latter
- joncalhoun 10y agoSometimes it isn't about you, but it is about the guests themselves. My wife and I opted to do both physical + digital for our wedding and we found that the older crowd all relied on physical invites and info for things like the schedule, RSVPing, etc, while the younger crowd all used the digital alternative. To be clear, the older crowd all knows how to use FB etc, and most had smartphones, but many still appreciated having something physical both to remember the wedding (my grandmother keeps the save the date on her fridge 5 years later), and to reference without having to constantly pull out a smart device. Sure, you could argue that it is your day and you can do what you want, but I look at a wedding as a collective celebration. If it was just my day I wouldn't invite those people. I invited everyone that I wanted to be a part of that celebration with me, so I also put in a little extra effort to help them enjoy the day as much as I did.
- davidcbc 10y agoOur older guests all figured it out and didn't complain, even the ones who aren't particularly technical. Would they have liked a physical copy? Maybe, but wedding planning was already stressful enough without having to deal with one more thing. If they wanted a keepsake we had physical programs at the actual ceremony. Having everything digital also allowed us to send reminders and updates to everyone all at once. For us the tradeoff was absolutely worth it.
- Markoff 10y agodon't forget the ecology argument, that's always saver if someone doesn't wanna admit they are just cheap
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- xzel 10y agoGlad you followed up with "in my opinion". All in all sounds very preachy to me. Either way, this sounds like a way you say it vs. what you said argument. I'd rather have someone share a special moment in their life with me than worry about wasting 10 minutes writing an invitation. Plus as stated else where one can pay a company to handwrite notes for you.
- lukaszkups 10y agoI think writing all these programs and functions, setup everything etc. in total it takes longer than just doing it 'by hand'..
- Moru 10y agoDepends totally on the amount of people invited. When you start coming close to 500, you don't want to do everything by hand...
- xzel 10y agoWell now you have some source code to start with :) I doubt writing all the notes which people send out, of which there are a few batches (invites, RSVP, thanks), could be less than writing this, which isn't much more than sample twilio and a database, and reusing it for each letter "event".
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- lpa22 10y agoI felt very similarly for my first 3 weddings. But I finally let go and automated my 4th, and I think everyone appreciated it.
- syngrog66 10y ago- Donald Trump
- xgbi 10y agoThere's a WaaS (Wedding-as-a-service) opportunity right there.
- pmarreck 10y agoGiven that divorce is a $50 billion industry http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/06/divorce-documentary_n_4550450.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/06/divorce-documentary..., I'm guessing that automating divorce has a lot more market potential
- elcapitan 10y agoMaybe we could have personalized chat bots do the dating for us too, that would make it even more efficient.
- j45 10y agoWhat you value might not be what everyone else values. Many weddings in this world also are not just about the bride and groom. They are often family reunions with a wedding on the side as the excuse for lots of people to get together after many, many years. Weddings are a time for celebration and enjoyment for the bride and groom, as much as guests. Guests often forget that the bride & groom often have no memories of their day as it's a blur. In addition to printed invitations, I heavily used technology where possible: - Mailchimp segmented similar to this post was invaluable. - Google Sheet that grew like crazy - My wedding ended up having a ceremony in two cities, double the work and planning - used Asana, worked great. - A little app on Android called Textpansion was fantastic for sending out pre-made snippets of information as needed - addresses, dates, times, locations, updates. All it would take is click on a snippet, paste it into the message, and off I go. The one thing I couldn't get to? - Running facial recognition on all the photos that will never see much circulation. Luckily, waiting on this has made it easier.
- srtjstjsj 10y agoOP also went to "a lot of effort" to build a cute automated solution, akin in spirit to your cute invitations. Same art, different medium.