You can spot a wedding invitation in your mailbox from 20 paces. Gone are the weighty, gold-embossed affairs with awkwardly formal swirly writing and a serious tone, and in their place is the stationery equivalent of a Moulin Rouge dancer with all
the tassels.
We are talking feathers, ribbons and rose petals cascading from a heart-studded envelope, revealing an invite written in a romantic style that would make a Mills & Boon author blush.
Asking friends and loved ones to share your happy day has become a no-holds barred schmaltz-fest. The more elaborate the paperware, the better. Couples feel they need to entice their friends to join them by delivering softly scented missives. The truth is they're wasting their time, because unless the party promises to be pretty spectacular it's extremely unlikely that you'll go, not because you're a shallow and useless friend, but because it won't take place at the Marriage Registry on Cotton Tree Drive, but on a glacier in Switzerland, or floating in a hot air balloon across the Amazon Basin.
There was a time when people quietly invited friends and family to buy them a toaster, dress up and grab a cab to the church on the second Saturday of the month. Now, guests are required to take out a loan from the bank because it's so unfashionable to be married in the country you live in. It just has to be Bali, on the beach.
So now there are plane tickets and hotels to sort out, an outfit to buy to suit the chosen location and time off work to negotiate.
