Prior to the invention of the moveable-type printing pressbyJohannes Gutenberg in 1447, weddings in England weretypicallyannounced by means of a Town crier: a man who would walkthroughthe streets announcing in a loud voice the news of theday.Traditionally, anyone within earshot became part ofthecelebration.
In the Middle Ages, illiteracy was widespread, so the practiceofsending written wedding invitations emerged among thenobility.Families of means would commission monks, skilled in theart ofCalligraphy, to hand-craft their notices.
Such documents often carried the Coat of arms, or personalcrest,of the individual and were sealed with wax.
From 1600 onward
Despite the emergence of the printing press, theordinaryprinting techniques of the time, in which ink was simplystampedonto the paper using lead type, produced too poor a resultforstylish invitations. However, the tradition of announcingweddingsin the newspaper did become established at this time.
In 1642, the invention of metal-plate engraving (or Mezzotint)byLudwig von Siegen brought higher-quality wedding invitationswithinthe reach of the emerging middle class.[1] Engraving, as thenameimplies, requires an artisan to "hand write" the text inreverseonto a metal plate using a carving tool, and the plate wasthen usedto print the invitation. The resulting engravedinvitations wereprotected from smudging by a sheet of tissue paperplaced on top,which is a tradition that remains to this day.
At the time, the wording of wedding invitations wasmoreelaborate than today; typically, the name of each guestwasindividually printed on the invitation.