If nearly all of your guests are tech-savvy 30-somethings, then it’s just not a problem, because they’ve whitelisted your e-mail address already. And for those half a dozen who aren’t tech savvy, a printout of your e-mail on nice paper will accomplish the task nicely. You tailor your invitations to the people you intend to invite. Remember where Miss Manners said to make your guests feel comfortable at your event? If you’re intending on inviting a bunch of your parents’ friends, most of which don’t use e-mail, then such an approach would be inappropriate.

We set up a website and asked people to RSVP through the site or by e-mailing one of us, and Google’s Documents and Sites has a lovely free way to handle all of that, with forms that will import directly to spreadsheets, allowing you to send reminder notices for those who don’t reply quickly, without annoying those who do. And yes, our reception is a pool party, and yes, I’m doing most of the cooking, so the only deadline is when I go shopping for reception food. All I need is about a week’s notice, as I’ve been doing parties for this bunch of friends for years now. And this kind of event, even if it is preceeded by a wedding, is perfectly suited to e-mail.

In short: LOVE (but know your audience)

In short – e-mail invites are the way of the future, and though Grandma might not be tech savvy, the grandkids are. I haven’t gotten a paper invite for the past ten years, and frankly, haven’t missed them.

If you really wanted to do ecards, you should have them done custom. You could, with very little digging, find an artist on deviantart to make something nice that would fit the feel of your wedding. There are so many amazing artists out there that do freelance online (usually not very expensive either) that it just seems stupid to go premade on something like this.
I don’t have a problem with ecards themselves, but the fact that these are premade and you’re supposed to just put your text on it seems SO cheap.

@KTB: When my maid of honor got married three years ago, her extremely proper parents refused to put RSVP cards in the invitations because they, following Miss Manners, thought those cards were “tacky.” The result: most of the guests buried the bride and groom in a sea of confused phone calls and e-mails — “how do I RSVP?” After that, her advice to me was: “Whatever you do, don’t leave out the RSVP cards. People are lost without them!”

That said, I think if you explicitly tell people to RSVP by e-mail or by phone, there’s less room for confusion (and giving people the phone option means you don’t automatically exclude less tech-savvy guests). My fiance’s mother has done that for our rehearsal dinner, and it seems to be working pretty well. In fact, some people have RSVP’d to her who haven’t bothered to drop our card in the mail yet!

What I object to in the example I gave is the mismatch in style. I don’t think a hotmail address goes with a printed, decorated, formal invitation. It would have been fine with a more casual style of printed invitation, or a handwritten or emailed invitation. Although I don’t think I’d go with a hotmail address for any of those, but some other email address (yes, I’m a snob).

I sincerely doubt that there will be a paper invitation forthcoming.

Before my own wedding, I polled friends on online RSVPs, and the overwhelming majority cited relatives/other guests with little online savvy, and said it took forever to call everyone to find out who was coming. I’m big on environmental sustainability, and we still decided to enclose reply postcards for our guests in order to cut down on our stress levels. We sent out three pieces: invite, reply card and envelope. We’re recycling most of the reply cards, and keeping the ones with fun comments or pictures. We had some artistic guests!

1: Oops! Grandma doesn’t have a computer.

2: Oops! Your invitation was caught in my spam filter so I’m going to spend the rest of the year mad at you for not inviting me to your wedding and you’re going to spend the rest of the year mad at me for not coming.

3: Oops! I didn’t have something to stick to my refrigerator so I forgot your wedding. My bad.

4: Oops! A computer virus caused your invitation to go out to everyone on your email list. Including your ex-boy/girlfriend who’s address you had “forgotten” to delete.

5: Oops! Your cousin Franklin forwarded the invitation to some of his friends and now your modest outdoor wedding is going to be more like an Alpha Beta party.

Perhaps it is just because I’m part of the plugged in generation, but if the pretty invite was embedded in the email and not an evite stock photo mess, I’d be ok with it. If Grandma doesn’t have email, then print one out for her on some nice cardstock from OFfice Despot or something.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pizdushka/3557747805/

^That is a sample b-day invite just to see what I’d be sending in lieu of a paper invite.

Maryof Doom, could they be planning to send paper invitations in August or September? It might just be the save-the-dates and RSVPs that are electronic. That said … Facebook? Really? Yeesh. I’m OK with electronic invitations but I draw the line at Facebook.