Monday, May 07, 2007

We had to laugh

I've been looking long and hard for an invitation which is Chinese, but not tacky. Chinese themed invitations generally seem to feature a lot of metallic gold and glitter and foil stamping; they are also often on cheap card stock, such as you'd expect a birthday card to be printed on. I am a paper snob, and I want luxurious, thick card stock. If I could justify the cost of letterpress, I would go for it. I love the textural quality of good paper, and I'm not into the flashy glitter.

Finally, I stumbled on this invitation from White Aisle.


That symbol in the lower right corner is the Chinese "double happiness" character. Each half is the Chinese character for "happiness" and two happinesses together is a traditional good wish for a wedding. I would very much like to incorporate this into my wedding. I like the dragon, too: it's graphic and interesting, Chinese without being flashy. I think this invitation is unusual and interesting, and it's reasonably priced, so I ordered a sample.

What do you know? My sweetie hates it. The dragon is too "in your face". He wants something classic, simple and (to my mind) dull. As we discussed it, we started to giggle. Once again, our opinions are directly opposed.

What could we do? We had to laugh. And it's back to the drawing board for me, perhaps literally: I am starting to think of designing my own.

2 comments:

The Beast Mom said...

What if you did an enlarged "background" of the double happiness symbol and dropped the text on top of that? The symbol would still be prominent but it would be muted enough in the background to give the card a symmetrical/formal look too. (I agree that most Asian themed invites are cheap/gaudy looking. Korean ones are same only substitute "gold" for "glossy pink" gag.)
-bm

Anonymous said...

I agree with your sweetie about the dragon. I like Beast Mom's suggestion...

--cass