Do you know anything about the history of the invitation? Most likely you have received a formal invitation to a wedding and pulled out two envelopes and the invitation itself and the tissue paper within that. The reason for all of those extra materials lays in the history of the invitation. Long ago when people of the aristocracy would throw a party, it was common to send a note to all that were invited. Reading and writing was a sign of wealth and importance and so to send a note also set your stature.

Before the printing press all notes were handwritten and folded into a piece of paper to protect it from getting dirty. This is what we use today as an envelope. These envelopes kept the notes clean and unread, as they were all sealed with a wax seal to ensure privacy to both the writer and the recipient. Being hand delivered prior to the postal service we have today was also a dirty job, giving one more reason to enclose the note prior to sending it. The reason the evolution of two envelopes came about was due to the fact that there did not used to be addresses to people’s homes. This made for a very lengthy set of directions to be given to the deliverer.

After the printing press was invented, many of the rich could afford to have their invitations printed and it again served as some marker of stature to have them made this way. The reason for the tissue paper in the invitation came from this event. As the invitations rolled off the press they were still wet and couldn’t be stacked or the ink would smear. Therefore, the printers came up with the idea of the tissues to keep the ink from smearing onto the card placed on top of it. Know that you know they reason for two envelopes and the tissue paper, maybe we can be a little kinder to the trees and save some money by leaving those two pieces out of the invitation equation.