At a time when the world is bent on preserving the earth’s fast depleting resources, there are some trends that are catching up and have been contributing to the green movement in their own ways.
Though these may be considered as the part of the changing lifestyle and an effect of technical advancement and awareness, these ‘green pastures’ though inconspicuous, reflect the increased awareness among the people.
These are movements in the tectonics of fashion, tradition and lifestyle. One such movement that has indirectly saved a lot of paper and made wedding planning easier is the trend of ewedding invitations. In the last few years many dedicated websites offering a varied variety of e-invitations have come up with novel ideas.
e-invitations are not new, what is new is the thought behind the increasing usage of these invites.
As the CEO of Greenvelope.com puts it - ‘’More and more people are hosting ‘green’ events and trying to save paper.’’
Greenvelope.com, an exclusive site of e-invites, was created in 2008. Today it caters to hundreds of couples who wish to have hassle free weddings. The apprehensions related to whether a guest will be coming or not is ruled out as these websites offer the customers with an option to get replies from the guests which makes it easy for them to plan the preparations.
‘’There has been a tremendous response from customers and we continue to see increasing demand and growth. In terms of demographics, our user-base is very broad. Our customers are mostly in 20s and 30s but there are also people in their 40s and 70s who have been approaching us,’’ said Taryn, founder of glosite.com, another e-wedding invitation website.
These sites offer you a wide range in terms of designing the cards. These can be customised as per the requirements of the customers. Some of the unique features include animation where the host can walk the guest through the card. There is also a location map that helps the guests find their way to the venue.
The websites also have a section where guests can post their blessings for the newly married couple. There are multiple themes like ethnic, traditional, devotional, floral and many more to choose from. Another feature - theme tuning enables changing colour, pattern, fonts and pictures and even add music to it.
Designing a card on these sites is really simple. Anyone can design their own wedding cards as technical knowhow is not essential to use the software being used by these websites.
‘’I designed my own card and you know what the best part is, you don’t have to bother about lengthy addresses or pin codes. Get the e-mail addresses from facebook and your work is done,’’said Supriya who got married this May.
With each passing day the sites are developing and so is the preserving mindset of the people. ‘‘We are adding five new invitation sets based on Indian motifs. Since we have noticed a particular increase in users from India, we wanted to have some new designs especially for them,’’ said Susan Fontaine from Invys.com.
In today’s time where families are scattered all over the world, these sites have offered a fast and reliable alternative to the snail mails.