Billion-dollar invites!

‘Atithi Devo Bhava’ is the guest- principle of our society. The story stock of last week was Karnataka politician Gali Janardhan Reddy’s invitation for his daughter's wedding. Apparently, the leader had sent out invites in the form of boxes which on being opened auto-plays a music video on an LCD screen announcing the event. The video with the song ‘Atithi Devo Bhava’ introduces the bride and the groom in a cinematic manner. A perfect-personal invite for the guests!A few years ago, a wedding invitation card's most important purpose was to inform the guests about the event. The purpose has not changed much, but the format has. Especially in Kerala, weddings are becoming more grand and creative day by day. Gone are the days where wedding invitations were a formal thing, printed in classy layout, thick paper and golden texts. Now there are invite boxes with goodies or whacky invites with a story to tell.  

Roji Abraham and Sharon, who are getting married at the end of the year, came up with a peppy invite design, along with the QR code generated for the location of the wedding venue. “We wanted something unique and different from the run-of-the-mill invitation cards — something a bit more lively, exciting and less formal and had a very personal touch to it. This card is mostly for our internet-savvy friends. So we came up with the idea of having a card with cartoon featuring the two of us on a motorcyle as we always commute on my motorcycle. We will probably get a formal card for the more traditional (elderly) family members for our families to distribute in person.   We are also getting printouts of the cartoon card so that we can keep it as a memento,” says Roji.

Fatema Jeffrin, creative head of the Kozhikode-based wedding planning company OWC, says,  “The whole concept of the formal invite is slowly dying. Now we have brides and grooms  who arrange pre-wedding shoots to print in their invites and come up with mood boards and offbeat ideas to bring into it a ‘wow!’ factor. We were also asked by clients to design e-invites which are very peppy and informal; they usually circulate it     amongst their friends and close family and the formal printed invite goes out to the second circle of friends and family. Unlike North India, South Indians don’t have this custom of a luxurious invite with some ‘Shagun’ for the guests, but slowly the culture is coming down South.”  

Emil Joseph, who runs Craft Comics, has a special section in his media company, just to make customised wedding invitations . He says, “Wedding is a big market and only those who can come up with new ideas can survive in the market. That is how we came up with the customised wedding card concept. What we do here is first discuss the theme of the wedding with the couple, understand the story of how the couple  met and inculcate all these together and develop a perfect invite.”

A wedding invite designed by Craft ComicsDesigner     Hiran     Unnikrishnan’s designs were so popular that  they were trending in social media once, when one of the invitations designed, inspired from the dialogues of the 80’s movie Mazha peyyunnu     Maddalam kottunnu got shared and sold like hot cakes. “Most people approach us with the idea of doing something different. So far only a few have suggested ideas on their invites. The informal invites are designed primarily for social media requirements, say, when they put up a page of their wedding invites they want customised invite designs for their cover picture and profile. But mostly, the informal cards that are printed goes up to a number of 50-100. It is the creative quality or the impression that matters; so now people don’t mind spending on them.”