If what to wear to a wedding is one of the most asked questions of social dressing, what can you, the bride, or you, the bride’s mother, do to help find an answer?

Let us consider. As in any analysis, one most understand the first principle. And the first principle of etiquette is to make people comfortable. People, in this instance, including you, the groom, your family, and the rest of the guests. The difficult part being, you may want everyone to show up dressed a certain way, and they may not have the background or temperament to support, or even understand, your vision.

So how do you get close to what you’d like, without bossing everyone around? Because, in the end, although you might wind up with the wedding that looks the way you dreamed, guests in just the right outfits, you don’t want to get there via rudeness.

In all honesty, this question was too advanced for me. So I went to the Master Of All Things Good Looking And Appropriate. I asked my mother. Here are the Rules Of Wedding Invitation Dress Codes, According To LPC’s Mother.

What You Cannot Say

• You cannot tell people what NOT to wear. No fair saying, No Jeans, or No Polyester, or No Mohawks.

What You Should Think Twice About Saying

• Dress “Phoenix Festive,” or any other culturally bound or ambiguous concept. The only exception here is, given what I’ve seen, you can use Something Or Other Black Tie. Cowboy Black Tie, for example. Creative Black TIe. If you must. The locution is now well understood across enough societal sub-groups that you risk only mild grumbling at the usage. You have to be capable of defining “Creative” as broadly as the human spectrum is wide, however. And, when you use these kinds of codes, please pay attention to the full message your invitation delivers. It’s tough to make sense of a Rock and Roll BBQ in the garden. With straw hats.

What You Should Say

• Use the standard dress code wording, i.e., White Tie, Black Tie, Cocktail Attire, Casual. This should be visible on the lower right hand of the invitation. I don’t care for the terms Formal, or Semi-Formal, as they are both less descriptive and reminiscent of high school dances.
• Augment guests’ understanding of your vision via details of the location. In other words, if you have a reception card, note whether the venue is a garden, a ballroom, a loft, a restaurant. People aren’t dumb. They will triangulate Cocktail Attire and Garden, and arrive in something festive but more floral than were your reception in a Chicago warehouse space converted for making art and drinking whiskey. You can also put venue details on a map, if one is included with the invitation.
• Use your wedding website, if you have such a thing, to further communicate the spirit you’re envisioning. With delicacy.
• Use the design of your invitations to reinforce the aesthetic and resultant dress code, i.e. if you are having a straight-up, classic, formal wedding, send black on cream invites. If you want a more oxymoronic wedding, i.e. a wild rave in black tie, you could bend the formal invite format, classic type font and all,  by printing pale blue on oxblood red. The medium is the message, and all that.

I did check with the standard sources, by the way, only to confirm that they had not addressed the question in detail.

The Wedding Channel says,

When you must make a note of dress code, etiquette dictates a few rules. Include the dress code on the reception invitation in the lower right-hand corner (it should not go on an invite with ceremony information). And be simple about it. Just write “black-tie” or “black-tie invited” so there’s no confusion.

Martha Stewart says,

If you want to stress the importance of the style of dress — black tie, for instance, or casual attire — place that information in the lower right corner, or on the reception card.

Since Martha is more permissive as to dress code placement, we’ll go with her. Also, you know, she’s Martha. You can also take a look at The Knot’s advice, or Ask Bronny. I didn’t find anything via search at A Practical Wedding, but you should always feel free to email Meg and Alyssa and Lauren at APW and see what they, and the wonderful community, think there. On Offbeat Bride, there is this story detailing exactly the pitfalls we’re discussing here.

But finally, and most importantly, this snippet of dialogue between my mother and myself.

Me: So, mom, let’s say someone is throwing a wedding, and they don’t want people to come in jeans, they can’t say that, right?
Mom: No.
Me: Because that would be rude.
Mom: That would be rude.
Me: But what if they don’t want the wedding to be stuffy either?
Mom: (with alacritude) Then don’t invite stuffy people.
Me: (peals of laughter) Mom, oh, Mom. Mom.

And there you have it.

Images:
Invitation from Cactus and Quail
Reception card from Dempsey and Carroll, edited to add the dress code line
Redonkulous invite, my fevered imagination. Pay no never mind.

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This long weekend my family celebrated 3 events. Dinner with my brother and his fiancee, the first time we siblings have seen the pair since their engagement. Fourth of July. Beloved Big Nephew’s 10th birthday. It was a festive couple of days.

In an odd harmonic convergence – we’re big on those in California – last Tuesday I got a note from Jill of Paperless Post. She asked if I would write something about their email invitations. Not a sponsored post request, just, would I write something, please? She was polite. Big points in my book. Hard to resist. And I have been advocating email invitations since this post, last year. So I played around on the Paperless Post site. It was fun.

I know a lot of people are fidgeting right now. “No, no, this cannot be!” And I would never advocate email invitations if any recipients would be offended. That’s the key. There is nothing, to my way of thinking, inherently impolite in electronics.

Email invitations are movies, paper is theater. Alternatively, emails are musicals, paper is opera. The traditional remains, the invention takes its space. You get my gist. In the year 2010, I would feel comfortable sending everything except the most ceremonial of invitations via a high-production-value email invitation system. High-production-values are key. The novelty alone, of animated envelopes and 3D effects, should compensate in many cases for the weight and feel of paper. By 2012, I may feel comfortable sending all invitations as bits and byes – assuming that music, video, and other effects can be added. There’s always a tipping point when the benchmark for appropriate and courteous shifts.

Manners should be observed in the spirit of true courtesy. Intent is more important than trappings, unless you’re meeting with the Ambassador.

Voila the Paperless Post I might have sent for last week’s events. To design these, I customized various templates by choosing papers, envelope liners, motifs, type fonts, and colors. Like I said, fun. All invitations arrive by email. Each email contains the image of an envelope.

When your invitee clicks as requested, the animated envelope opens up and your invitation rises from inside.

For my psychoanalyst brother who has been known to attend the Burning Man festival, I thought antique keys, in white, with a whimsical script on navy, might provide the correct soupcon of irony, all the while tipping a hat to our High WASP culture.

Click to R.S.V.P. and you see this reply card. All dimensional and everything.

For the 4th of July, a celebration more cultural than personal, I’d be happy going with one of their pre-set designs. Kind of nifty, no? Or, as my mother would say, “Dear, that’s very good-looking.”

While for my nephew’s birthday, we’d have to go soccer. Specifically, Chilean soccer. Open this envelope,

And out come these happy guys.

Who, judging from the multitude of Internet remarks I’ve seen, might make some midlife women very happy too. We will leave that statement where it lies, and move on. Click the photo, and the invitation turns over to reveal,

Fun, yes? Unfortunately, not perfect yet. My third response to Paperless Post, after 1) “Gee whiz, and 2) “I told you so!” was, “Oh I wish I could get my hands on their engineering team!” I wanted to write some use cases. The user experience, as we call it, wasn’t quite as intuitive as I would like. No way to search for invitation styles or motifs; instead, one has to browse through design after design. Cumbersome. Navigation provides redundant ways to move through the design process. Confusing. But still fun. I expect they will improve, as they state very politely that they are still in Beta, i.e. the trying it out phase. At least they’re polite and let you know.

My suggestion? Sign up. Play. See what you think. Could make a great birthday party invitation for your wired pre-teen. He or she could design it themselves. Using a photo they took with their iPhone ShakeIt Fauxlaroid or Hipstamatic apps. Thereby adding to the production value. Or, one could throw a rehearsal dinner for a much-loved brother. Just saying.

And that, my friends, is all the technology and with-it-ness I can muster for today. Phew. Teetering on the deep chasm of ignorance.

All images via Paperless Post, except the Chilean soccer players:).

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Someone from MyPunchbowl.com emailed me to politely tell me they have another online invite service. I haven’t looked at it, but they were very polite. Chelsea at frolic posted about cocodot, new and started by a photographer.

But, I concede, at this time, paper prevails. After all, I’m not completely unreasonable. So, if you’re looking for wedding invitations, Mimi from Mika78 did a great roundup for Weddings Fresh here. If you simply cannot keep your creativity under wraps (it’s hard sometimes, isn’t it?) my particular favorite is the Edward Gorey style below. I mean, who can find even a hint of sentimentality in Mr. Gorey?

In conclusion, as we said in college, even more special is if your mom and dad PAINT your invitations. For the final word on the subject, I give you Buckeroomama’s wedding invitations. She’s moved on to kids now, in the way of the world, but still. Invitations of an underwater scene painted by your mother and father because you like to scuba dive?

Goodness me. To say nothing of photos of Hong Kong wedding cars. Life is good. Life is very good.

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Imagine that there are designers out there and you love their stuff. That part’s not hard. For example, Erin at inkOBSESSIONdesigns. I think her graphics are adorable. This birdie, for one.

My personal favorite graphic is her space age flowers. Imagine you wanted to include these in a birthday invitation. And you wanted animation. And there was a tool like Polyvore where the two of you could collaborate. The collaboration part is as important as the actual design and effects. (The problem now is you would have to collaborate with software engineers. Not advisable for normal people.) It might come out like this. Only way better. (Note that Erin is ONLY responsible for the cute flowers here. Don’t want anyone to think this prototype would be what her talent would produce. It’s me muddling around.)

The invite email.

S. Invitation First Page by High WASP on Polyvore.com

You click on the >>click here<< (genius, huh?), and come to a web page with a gorgeous, textured, full screen image.

S. Invitation Second Page by High WASP on Polyvore.com

This is a Roy Lichtenstein painting. Imagine it’s animated so that the sun sets and the colors change and the pixels pixel. With, in my taste range, a fragment of Happy Birthday by Stevie Wonder playing in the background. Then you click again. You don’t see a new page, the animation takes you, as though you were opening a page, to this. We’ve moved on beyond HTML.

S. Invitation Third Page by High WASP on Polyvore.com

And again. The border is a Crane stationery image. If they wanted to get in on the deal, we’d let them, right?

S. Invitation Fourth Page by High WASP on Polyvore.com

The designer’s name rolls by like movie credits.

I don’t think I’m insane. Not a designer, clearly, but not insane. If I were Jan, who codes her own, I could do this now. If I were Erin, it would actually look great.

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Go create an invitation. There’s a pretty robust search and browse function to help you find a design you like. If you ever want to feel cool in high tech circles just call something either ‘robust” or “non-trivial.” You’ll be good to go.

Pretty nifty designs on pingg. I like the one below. High degree of tongue-in-cheek there. Sort of like, alcohol anyone?

Design and preview functions feel good. The design page shows through the transparent background during the preview so you don’t get disoriented. I’m really prone to disorientation in web land.

You fill in your event info separately from choosing the design. Again, good. Even better, this is what your guest sees in their email box.

pingg invitations send the guest just enough event information, in an image that looks like an actual piece of paper, and then tells them to click on the event website. Not to see the Evite, to see the event website. After all, you aren’t throwing an Evite, you are throwing a party.

When your guest arrives at the event website, there they see the event information in detail and they can RSVP. To software, an RSVP is just data. To people, it’s a moment of feeling and humanness. With any luck, someone is smiling.

Finally, pingg offers a print option. If the clean design and well-thought out functionality don’t get you, or if there is someone on your list who can’t or won’t be happy with online invitations, print away…See? Progress. But we are still not finished. There’s more technology can do for us. I promise. Suspend your disbelief until next week.

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The state of online invitations is currently defined by Evite. To the point where people use the word “Evite” to mean online invitation. Like Kleenex meaning tissue stored in a box to blow your nose with. People will often say that they don’t like online invitations when they really mean they don’t like Evite. But let’s not be harsh. Evite was the first. Evite defined the space. They developed the concept and ironed out the bugs. Problem is they didn’t end up with a good user experience. And technology has evolved to where it could be better and other companies have plans. For all I know, Evite has plans.

For now, let’s take a quick look at why Evite hasn’t been able to convert wedding, birthday, or fabulous cocktail parties over to online invitations. I say quick because I will spare you a full-fledged User Experience analysis of the site. You can thank me later. So. The goals of what we might call premium invitations are to a) brand, communicate, convey the spirit of your party b) honor and delight your guests c) give you a creative outlet d) manage attendance. Evite focuses on managing attendance. Everything else is secondary. Just take a look at their landing page. Targeted more to “event management” than “fabulous invitation design.”

And customizing the design? You can’t really. You can insert a couple of images into a few slots.

Your guests don’t have a much better experience. They receive this in their email. It’s not dreadful, but it’s not inviting…get it? It’s not deluxe.

When guests land on the invitation, it’s a static page. A real invitation might have confetti, might have a pocketfold, might have an RSVP card. It’s what we call in Web 2.0 design, “the progressive reveal.” And Evite’s underlying design around managing event data becomes clear at this point. You fill in a form. Like a shopping cart. Where’s the romance, the mystery, the allure of a great event?

It’s not their fault. Evite was first. Back when data ruled the world and HTML meant that each page had to be a form to “submit.” But we don’t want to be data when we go to a party. And the world doesn’t reveal itself to us in a series of static pages. In the world of real, lovely, paper invitations, you have texture, crinkling, movement, surprises. My prediction is that these will come to online invitations too, that the wave has already begun. It may move beyond self-serve, have to involve talented designers, just like custom paper invitations do.

In this case, my tech career trumps High WASP regard for tradition. I believe that the higher goals of the invitation tradition can be brought into the virtual world with no loss of interest. I’m not alone, in fact. Which is the code word for More To Follow.

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There are three preferred types of friends and family invitations.** Old school invitations are handwritten as follows. Seldom seen today. Note the gold bumblebee. Apparently the bee is or was a symbol of Freemasonry. Who knew.

Most common, especially amongst the AARP crowd, is the hybrid. The design still completely traditional and devoid of sentiment. With navy.

But signs have emerged, amongst the technically literate, of an affection for ironic missives printed on a computer. For my 40th birthday, as an example, I sent invitations somewhat like this:

The party involved lawn flamingos. And an open bar. High WASPs like kitschy artifacts. And alcohol. Since I was breaking away from the classic invitation, I had to go tongue-in-cheek. I had to go all the way to gold scrolls and flamingo clip art. Otherwise people might have known I cared whether they came or not.

You are highly unlikely to see an invitation like this to a High WASP party.
Dusty pink with flowers and all lower case lettering makes us nervous. It feels sentimental. Even declasse. I apologize for our attitude. Please forgive us. We just don’t feel comfortable with sentiment. At least not on paper, sent in the mail, where anyone might see.

But if you are throwing a great party, one that begins with a rush of well-wishers bearing beautifully wrapped presents, continues with unending platters of food involving cheese, rises to a cacaphony of intoxicated laughter, and ends sweetly on a patio in the dark night over melted ice, weak brandy, and the tail end of a cake, send me whatever invitation you want. We can ignore all sorts of faux pas for the sake of a great party. From F. Scott to Mr. Cheever, the tradition is deeply ingrained.

*All stationery from www.crane.com.
**As opposed to charity event invitations. (I forfeited my opportunity to attend many charity events by a) failing to attend dancing school b) having to hold a job. Although I did go to the 1977 or 1978 Hungarian Debutante Ball where my photo was taken by Larry Fink who then exhibited the result at the Museum of Modern Art in a show about rich dissolute young people. I wasn’t terribly dissolute but never mind. That’s another story).

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This invitation and reply card etc. says, “Oh look, a somewhat tacky (the ultimate shame) romantic image. However, we will ignore that image, and even poke sly fun at it with our rock and roll BBQ. All the while we will adhere to all wedding conventions and language.” And the calligraphy will be hand done, “Because, (name of person being scolded) calligraphy type fonts are not… (the done thing is implied but not said).” A type font is a type font and should admit to its origins.

The final effect is one of respecting all conventions and yet indicating that one might somehow rise above them. Of making a gesture towards love, but quickly, so that no embarassment can be felt, by anyone. Frankly it’s all pretty exhausting. And while what I’m saying is true, I’m exaggerating. You have to exaggerate to be able to describe all this, and once exaggerated it sounds worse than it is. For the most part. And BTW I made the invitation up:).

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