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I don’t know how many pieces I can start with the phrase, “Weddings are expensive.” But here I am, again, telling you that weddings are expensive. For every swan ice sculpture and seventeen-piece wedding band, there’s a father-of-the-bride who’s signing checks and thanking his lucky stars he didn’t have even more daughters.
But before the wedding ceremony can even occur, there’s the money-suck of “save the dates” and invitations. I’ve never really understood why invitations can’t completely take the place of “save the dates” in the first place, but the wedding industry is based solely on selling people a bunch of shit they don’t need.
Case in point – video wedding invitations.
The New York Times, as we’ve discussed before, is the go-to hub for expensive socialite weddings. So, it only makes sense that they’d be the destination for all things expensive, namely this dumbass creation that you’d have to be insane to spend your money on.
Per The New York Times:
Video invitations sent via email are nothing new, but sending a video invitation by mail adds another elegant, and expensive, step to the process.
…
Spreengs is another New York company that offers mailable digital cards. The business is the retail arm of a larger company, PIM, that makes film brochures for companies, said Robbie Kory, the sales manager for Spreengs. Wedding invitations have so far accounted for a fraction of interest in Spreengs. “But we’re watching sales go up as more people discover what they can do with video,” he said.
This is dumb. I wish I could come up with a more creative way to describe these overpriced iPad-ish invitations, but “dumb” is the simplest way to refer to them.
“When people see these invitations, you should see their faces,” the founder told The New York Times. “We’re not selling invitations. What we’re really selling is surprise and joy.” But I’ve got a newsflash for you, Walter Cronkite – you are selling invites because you know that there are enough bridezillas in the world to fund your start-up.
These video invitations look like this:
Yes, you open this book of secrets to reveal a video slideshow of your friends making out with one another. It’s the FaceTime of wedding invitations, except you can’t just hang up when you’re done with it. Instead, you have to figure out how long is long enough to keep it around your apartment before it’s acceptable to slide it into your trashcan.
The price for these begins at $65 a piece with a 25 invite minimum. But (deal alert!) if you buy 500, the price goes down to… wait for it… only $38 a piece. Yes, that’s a $19,000 price tag to tell your friends you want to party with them. That’s a brand new 2017 Ford Fiesta. One of the founders even went as far as to say, “No amount of cotton rag or rhinestones will ever bring a tear to anyone’s eye the way a beautifully done video invitation will,” which are the exact words who knows that no one makes money off cotton and rhinestones.
What’s next? Someone who’s job it is to come up with wedding hashtags? Wait, that already exists. .
[via The New York Times]
Image via The Knot
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Will
Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.
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Will is going to be a Groomzilla, if he gets married.
People are so stupid.
These are basically the books from Myst
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Holy shit, you did not just reference Myst.
is this like a bootleg ipad? can you do stuff with the screen after you’ve seen the invitation? i don’t get it…
I could see a market for this type thing except it would be in postcards at famous tourist destinations. You could send an interactive postcard to whomever and it would be personalized.
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fuck this noise.
What a load of crap. All of that money on something you could do on Facebook for free. (Same thing goes for thank you cards.)
100% the same thing does not go for Thank You cards.If someone comes to your wedding, spends a few hundred dollars between the gift, outfit, hotel room for the night etc., you owe them an actual thank you card, not some BS status on Facebook.
Todd taking yet another L.
The only difference between the two is that one uses an antiquated, inaccurate, and inefficient form of delivery. It is completely nonsensical.
You’re the last person who should be talking about doing what makes sense.
you’re incorrect here, todd. greeting cards are meant to make the recipient feel special. how special do you feel getting a facebook message that took someone .5 seconds to construct?
btw — i make greeting cards for a living.
Todd has already proven he does not have good taste. I’m not surprised he thinks a generic Facebook message is sufficient for something as monumentous as a wedding.
Clevelander who makes cards? how’s the new American Greetings headquarters treating ya?
it’s wonderful 🙂 i also live like 2 mins down the street from it, so no complaints from me!
So you are saying the delivery method means more than the intent behind the message? Should I also write it with a feather and inkpot instead of a pen? How about a wax seal instead of an envelope with a gluestrip?
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t thank people. I’m also not saying that we shouldn’t thank them individually. I’m saying that setting standards on the delivery method is an absurdity in our society.
And as far as your question goes, the groom and bride just dropped around $30,000 on a party for me and my friends to show up to and get hammered, I don’t really have a problem if they don’t feel the need to waste 20 extra minutes for the $50 gift I got them in return.
I assume this is just a throwaway take so Girl doesn’t want to marry you anymore
LOL, so you’re going to post “thanks for the blender (or whatever gift they got you) we really love it and have already started making smoothies in it (or whatever the expressed intent of the gift is) We’ll think of y’all everytime we use it” 300 times ON FACEBOOK? I would be so embarassed if my husband had this take on gratitude.
And, no. I’m not saying the delivery method is more important than the intent BUT your approach is lazy, and pedestrian. If you can’t take a few hours to write out thank you cards you don’t deserve to receive gifts. We did ours on our flight to our honeymoon. A few cocktails and literally being confined to a small space for 7 hours made for the perfect scenario to knock them out.
That’s fine with me. I won’t be throwing a wedding to receive gifts. I will be doing it to celebrate being with the person I love.
Deserving a gift is an oxymoron by the way.
Careful, Todd.
Girl is going to be all over these if you make the idiotic decision to get down on one knee for her.