Weddingbee boards

Traditionally, a lady always had her own personal stationery (some of us still do). The letter sheets were engraved with her home address and (if she had one) with her personal crest or monogram. They were of heavy white or ecru paper, folded once along the left side (the better quality was folded twice: first along the top and then along the left side) were about four by six inches after folding. She would have envelopes to match in size, and the envelopes would be similarly engraved with her return address.

Sounds a lot like a wedding invitation, doesn't it?

That's because a proper formal wedding invitation *is* nothing more than formal lady's stationery, with an invitation already written on it at the printers. If a lady were having a party with few enough guests, she would write her invitations by hand (which is actually considered MORE formal and correct than having them mechanically printed). Engraving the invitation is a compromise reached in the nineteenth century between practicality and etiquette. Check out your Jane Austen, where ladies are described hand-writing every single invitation for grand balls and similar events. Engraving is still, according to Protocol, the only approved alternative to hand-writing, but just try to find a real engraver in most cities! So most of us unhappily resort to letterpress or ink-jet printing.

But, even after hand-writing those invitations, you put them into engraved (or nowadays, printed) envelopes. You couldn't have the actual addresses engraved (even thirty years ago) because engraving is done by hand-etching a copper plate and then using it to apply the ink to the paper. You'd have had to individually set up every single envelope! You couldn't even have done it weith printing, because mail-merge and personal printers were non-existent or rare: that's why you're stuck with hand-writing the addresses. But engraving the return addresses has been done since *my* great-grandmonther's time. In fact, HAVING personal stationery nowadays is one indicator of an old-fashioned etiquette-stickler.

If you really want to do things proper, get the second basic stationery element all ladies used to have: little half-size engraved fold-over notes called "informals" and little matching half-sized engraved envelopes. A lady would use those for her thank-you notes, or for sending with flowers, or for issuing informal invitations to things like tea or lunch.