Nobody complained, it took a couple hours to get everything set up the way we wanted it, and within a few days we had around a 90% response rate. Only 1 person RSVPed as no so it doesn't seem like anyone got the impression we didn't care about them
wow - any idea on the conversion rate? if so, how many sigma are you talking here? did you do any a/b testing for future iterations?
With this level of customer focus, it is easy to see why noone complained, which by the way is totally a great metric for measuring ROI.
In the future I would like to run experiments to see how the invite affects gifts received, but I haven't yet convinced my wife to participate in that study.
My wife and I opted to do both physical + digital for our wedding and we found that the older crowd all relied on physical invites and info for things like the schedule, RSVPing, etc, while the younger crowd all used the digital alternative.
To be clear, the older crowd all knows how to use FB etc, and most had smartphones, but many still appreciated having something physical both to remember the wedding (my grandmother keeps the save the date on her fridge 5 years later), and to reference without having to constantly pull out a smart device.
Sure, you could argue that it is your day and you can do what you want, but I look at a wedding as a collective celebration. If it was just my day I wouldn't invite those people. I invited everyone that I wanted to be a part of that celebration with me, so I also put in a little extra effort to help them enjoy the day as much as I did.
Having everything digital also allowed us to send reminders and updates to everyone all at once. For us the tradeoff was absolutely worth it.
(I do wonder if all the people who say "collect memories, not things" have more vivid, eidetic memories than I do; mine can be a little fragmentary without help.)
I began doing this when my kids started school and would bring home new art every day. I love that they made a portrait of me by gluing macaroni to a paper plate then covering it in glitter, but I don't necessarily want to become the caretaker of that masterpiece forever.
"That's great Jimmy! Now let me get my camera..."
SNAP!
"There, now we've got that memory forever. Now open the trash can and throw it away!"
I know you don't literally do this, but that's what your comment made me think and it gave me a chuckle. How long do you usually hold on to them?
There was no rigid routine. Things would go in a pile and periodically the pile would go to the recycling bin.
I have a box with all my old handwritten letters from just before the Internet and email exploded. I rarely take it out, but when I do, it's kind of neat to show my niece and nephew.
I doubt writing all the notes which people send out, of which there are a few batches (invites, RSVP, thanks), could be less than writing this, which isn't much more than sample twilio and a database, and reusing it for each letter "event".
Many weddings in this world also are not just about the bride and groom. They are often family reunions with a wedding on the side as the excuse for lots of people to get together after many, many years.
Weddings are a time for celebration and enjoyment for the bride and groom, as much as guests. Guests often forget that the bride & groom often have no memories of their day as it's a blur.
In addition to printed invitations, I heavily used technology where possible:
- Mailchimp segmented similar to this post was invaluable. - Google Sheet that grew like crazy - My wedding ended up having a ceremony in two cities, double the work and planning - used Asana, worked great. - A little app on Android called Textpansion was fantastic for sending out pre-made snippets of information as needed - addresses, dates, times, locations, updates. All it would take is click on a snippet, paste it into the message, and off I go.
The one thing I couldn't get to?
- Running facial recognition on all the photos that will never see much circulation. Luckily, waiting on this has made it easier.