Getting Cagey Over Wedding Themes
We’re now onto the next stage of our wedding planning, which involves sending out invitations – and apparently involves picking a “theme”. To the uninitiated, this means your invites, your place-name cards, your table plan, your table centrepieces, probably even the ribbons on your car, have to match. Now, being jaded and cynical, I’m given to believe this is just a cunning ploy by the stationer to corner your business, but apparently it’s very important. So say the endless mountains of wedding magazines lying around my flat, which I’m sure are breeding.
Flowers? In a cage??
Now, we agreed fairly easily on a colour; a kind-of pale green which should look pretty good on the bridesmaids and my waistcoat. We also had no problems with the save-the-date cards, as we designed them ourselves and they were fairly tongue-in-cheek anyway. However, now things are getting serious, and it seems a number of companies called things like “Bespoke Joyous Perfection” are vying for our hard-earned cash.
Which brings me onto the birdcages.
Those of you who have already been through this will be nodding knowingly, while the rest of you are probably hovering somewhere between confusion and fear. Let me explain – the latest “fashion” in wedding design is birdcages. Cards shaped like birdcages, little birdcage place-names, centrepieces that are birdcages full of flowers. Yes, flowers in cages. Now, if Mrs P-to-be had been down the florists enquiring about the availability of Triffids, I could understand this – but what’s they symbolism here?
Entrapment? Beauty confined? Prison?? Plus, as regular readers may recall, Mrs. P-to-be is a Vet, and there’s nothing like a reminder of bygone days of keeping animals in cruel living conditions to brighten up the reception. We may as well put veal and foie gras on the menu, tiger skins on the floor, panda heads on the walls and hire a dancing bear.
Our save-the-date card was cat-themed, and it would be nice to continue this, but most cat cards seem to look like invitations to a six year-old’s birthday party – lovingly hand-drawn by the six year-old himself. In fact, wedding invitation cards all seem to fall into this category, or they are so painfully minimal and Victorian, you feel all the guilt of your sins just looking at them. The pale green theme we’re after doesn’t help here either, as they tend to look a bit like the kind of card you buy after a relative has passed on.
I’m sure we’ll agree on (or I’ll put up with) something soon, but in the meantime, if you know of any wedding invite websites that are neither infantile nor achingly Spartan, let me know. And no bloody birdcages.
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