Printed wedding cards or an online invitation?

• It is kept. A card on the mantelpiece, or tucked into a family album, lasts for years.
• It carries respect. For elders, and for the first invitations offered at the temple or gurdwara, a card handed over in person means something a message does not.
• It is something to hold: the paper, the box, the sweets that come with it.

• Time. Designing, proofing, printing and delivering takes weeks, and guests abroad receive a posted card weeks after everybody else — if at all.
• Cost per guest. A card, envelope and box, multiplied by several hundred families, adds up quickly, before postage.
• One card for everybody. Unless you print inserts, the colleague invited to the reception receives the same card as the cousin invited to the Haldi.
• Nothing can change. If the venue moves after the cards are printed, the only fix is a phone call to every family.
• No replies. Finding out who is coming still means ringing people.

• It arrives the same evening, everywhere — including the relatives abroad.
• Each family can have their own: greeted by name, and showing only the celebrations they are invited to.
• It can change. Fix the venue once and every guest's link shows the new one.
• It carries what a card cannot: a map to each venue, an entry for the guest's calendar, shuttle timings, and a reply that tells you how many are coming to each celebration.

What it cannot do is sit on the mantelpiece. That is the honest trade.

A PDF of the card is the usual halfway house, and it keeps the card's limits while losing its charm. Everybody receives the same one; it has to be downloaded and zoomed into on a phone; a change means sending a new one and hoping the old one is deleted; and it still tells you nothing about who is coming.

Many families now print a smaller run of cards — for the elders, for the first invitations, for the people who will keep them — and send everybody else a link. The cards carry the tradition; the link carries the logistics, reaches everybody the same evening, and brings the replies back as numbers.

If you do both, put the same details on each, and treat the link as the one that is kept up to date. If anything changes after the cards are printed, the link is where guests will find the new version.

Printed card prices vary too widely to quote honestly — from a simple single sheet to a boxed card with sweets — and most of the cost scales with the number of guests. An invitation sent as a link usually costs the same whatever the guest list. On Nimantran it is one price per wedding with no charge per guest, and building and previewing the whole invitation is free.