The industrial revolution brought on many fundamental changes in the way our society interacts notably the printing press. Everything was affected from newspapers to books with the creation known as lithography. Lithographing gave printers the ability to create sharp images and texts on paper without creating engraving plates to stamp ink. This new method revolutionized printing and notary including wedding invitations.

Now with the ability to produce wedding invitations at a mass level there was still delivery that had to be taken into consideration. During this time period the majority of mail was still delivered by a courier on horseback. Wedding invitations were placed in a secondary envelope to protect them during transit. Also, most people receiving them were still of upper class. When the wedding invitations would arrive, their exterior envelope would sometimes be dirty and abused. The family’s butler would remove the invitation from its exterior envelope and present the recipient with a fresh, clean invitation. Although our postal service is far more reliable and fast than of old, this traditional still carries on as it is customary to still place invitations in a second master envelope.
Immediately following World War II, commercially printed wedding stationary started playing a major role in society. Many credit the amount of incredible industrial growth and expansion of democracy as the reason more common folk could now mimic the social aspects of citizens who were previously considered upper class. The growth of formal wedding invitations was continually spurred by the introduction of a new method known as thermograph.

Thermograph is a less expensive way of achieving raised type often attributed to the engraved printing methods that were previously popular on wedding invitations. It presses the ink onto the paper without marking the paper, much similar to engraving. With the advent of this, achieving similar looks and feels were now finally affordable to everyone. Other more recent progressions in the wedding invitation world are the use of something called letterpress, where letters are pressed into the paper developing a unique feel. Laser etching, although incredibly expensive and hard to find, has brought with it the ability to create incredibly unique invitations that can be laser etched into materials like acrylic and metal. With such range and history behind something as simple as wedding invitations, we owe a lot to the pioneers of their time. Without their progress in printing capability, wedding invitations may still be only available to those of nobility. Courtesy indianweddingcard.com