You're hanging out with a friend. You come up with this great idea to throw a party!.. So you run over to your computer and pull up your favorite invitation site (Invitationconsultants.com of course!). After looking through all of your many options, you pick the perfect invitation for the occasion. You type in your wording and click your way through the checkout process. Before you know it, your invitations are at your front door! Too easy, right?
Shiny papers, raised inks, ribbons, die cuts: these are all luxuries we have become used to seeing in relation to invitations. Inviting your friends to a party wasn't always this easy though. When it became possible to have leisurely events such as a party, the task of inviting your friends was a bit different than it is today. Think feather quill and ink jar. Most invitations were hand written by a Scribe with the highly skilled art form of calligraphy. Instead of a paper like 110 lb. card stock, they used Parchment which is animal skin that is stretched and dried so it retains ink appropriately. Many important documents like Torahs, and other manuscripts were also created using parchment and calligraphy.
Before printing ever became efficient, the use of parchment and hand written calligraphy was the most popular method of inviting your friends during that time period. Invitations were created one by one. With 100+ guests, that would make for a very sore wrist!
So next time you're ordering invitations with all of the bells and whistles, just think about how it all began!
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