There are many formalities in life that people do not typically go against or break tradition with. One of the most formal things I can think of is the process for inviting a person to a wedding. The paper, the font and even the stamp placed on the envelope often matter to the couple...well at least to a happy bride. Disagreements on these details can cause a wedding catastrophe!I thought more about this after reading Josh’s review of Don Tapscott’s session at the Shop.org Annual Summit on the “Net Generation.” Looking at Tapscott’s definition of the “millennial” title not fitting the generation – combined with changes on the Internet – inspired me do a little bit more research on the subject. I came across another article that really drove home the point that my generation has really grown up online and is beginning to utilize it in an unconventional fashion. This really got me thinking about my own life and my informal survey group. I remembered a conversation I had recently with a few of my survey members and the results of the marriage between online and offline formalities surprised me.
I looked into how my friends use sites like Myspace and Facebook to interact with friends on a regular basis. As a generation, I think that we look at these sites as our personal property and for some reason feel the need to post every element about our personal lives. In fact, one of my friends was recently invited to a wedding through Facebook, and another used Facebook to invite people to a wedding.
According to my first friend, the couple decided to invite people this way to save money since they got married away and were having a reception back home for their friends and family. By not purchasing invitations they saved hundreds of dollars. My second friend invited people to a wedding via Facebook, because the couple did not have mailing addresses for all the people they wanted to invite. They knew that their friends checked their Facebook accounts and that this would be the best way of contacting them. I looked into it a little further to see if other people were utilizing Facebook in this way and found two other instances where people were asking the same question as I was about taking this formal process and putting it online and how to react to it.
My question is what will be next for us? Having the engagement process happen via Facebook?
One Comment
I have already seen a lot of invites. There was one when the invite was made as good as possible. It was not good looking but it was enough. the invite was a wedding invite. It was made out of time restriction, which they should not have done in the first place. I do however found Silver Screen Invites. They make such cool invites. and the good part is that everything is customizable too!