Today, most of us check our e-mail at least once a day and wouldn't know how to stay up-to-date with the fast paced world without our computers. Our dependence on the convenience of the Internet and technology might make it seem obvious that sending wedding invitations by email is a great idea. After all, you'd save time and money, right? So why not send e-invitations?

The answer is there are several reasons. Under no circumstances are wedding invitations ever supposed to be sent via e-mail. This is not a rule created by the printing industry to force couples to spend a couple thousand dollars on invitations. In fact, when you really think about it, it's a rule that makes perfect sense because the potential pros are outweighed greatly by the cons. Read our article; Budgeting Wedding Invitations.

Not All Guests are Email Savvy

Think about who you'd invite to your wedding. A large portion of your guest list will probably be computer-literate folks who have no trouble checking their e-mail and who have access to a computer at home, work, or school. However, a few of the guests may not meet that description. Think about your grandparents, for example. Would they prefer to get an impersonal email message announcing your marriage or a beautiful invitation on creamy paper that they can keep?

Although many of us have integrated technology into every aspect of our lives, we have to remember that not everyone else has. By sending invitations by e-mail, you could end up leaving out some of the people you care about the most.

Email Isn’t Perfect

Sure, the postal service could lost one of your damage the outer envelope, but the chances of them making a mistake is fairly slim under most circumstances. The average person rarely ends up with lost or damaged mail. With e-mail, however, it's not uncommon for our expected messages to suddenly end up marked as junk mail then discarded by our spam filters. E-mail is often re-routed through servers and can end up in the wrong person's mailbox, too. That doesn't happen a lot, but it probably happens at least as often as postal errors.

The bottom line is that you stand a better chance of having people miss your invitations if you are sending them by e-mail.

Email Sends a Negative Message

Finally, weddings are about appearances. You wouldn't devote nearly half of your entire budget to a wedding reception if you weren't trying to impress your guests. When you send an invitation by e-mail, you are telling those guests one of two things: 1) I don't care enough about you to take the time to put together a traditional invitation for my wedding or 2) I can't afford to pay for invitations. Chances are you don't want to be sending either of those messages.

One of the main rules of wedding invitations is that their tone should match the tone of the wedding. Well, even the most informal wedding's tone is more formal than an e-mail which takes only seconds to type and send. Most of us don't even spell check them. If you're taking the energy to plan a wedding, then you need to invest the money and time to send invitations, even if you purchase the paper and make them at home on your printer.