“We wanted people to go, ‘Oh, that’s cool,’ ” said Ms. Dinh, 28, of her decision to use the code, which took guests to a Web site about the Nov. 5, 2011, wedding weekend events. The QR code, frequently seen on billboards and in magazines, was also in keeping with her aesthetic. “We didn’t want a traditional verbose information card, so using the code meant the card could be really clean,” she said.
Couples, and not just the tech-loving types who register their receptions on Foursquare and create Twitter hashtags for the event, are using the codes for a range of tasks. These include sending guests to an R.S.V.P. Web site and even automatically adding the ceremony to guests’ electronic calendars, as Melody Chalaban and Michael Swain did for their Oct. 22, 2011, wedding in Pala, Calif. Never mind the novelty factor; the codes make life easier.
“Who really wants to spend hours manually counting reply cards and building spreadsheets for vendors?” said Chrissy Stengel, 33, of San Francisco, who recently sent out invitations to her March 24 wedding with a QR code to reply. “If the technology is available, why not use it so everyone wins?” (Dozens of Web sites will generate a free code.)
Giovanni and Evangelina Jaramillo enclosed QR codes with the invitations to their Nov. 23, 2011, wedding that turned on the map application on guests’ phones and gave them directions to the reception at the Milleridge Inn in Jericho, N.Y.
The property has a main restaurant and a tricky-to-find cottage, where the couple held their reception. “With the QR code, we were able to bring people right to the front door,” said Mr. Jaramillo, who was happy to find a majority of his 127 guests used it. “Nobody had to stop at the restaurant and ask around.”
Mr. Jaramillo, 32, said he came up with the idea when the events manager of the location handed him a “cheesy piece of paper with their directions on it,” he said. “It was white and our invitation was cream-colored. Their card would have stuck out like a sore thumb.”
Of course, traditionalists argue that the real sore thumb is the chunky checkerboard code itself, which resembles a computer error (even tech bloggers have called the codes “robot barf”): hardly a cordial invitation to scan with a phone, let alone to attend a big event.
Invitation startups like
Mighty Nice Inc., a Chicago-based company offering online and letterpress invitations, present the code as a standard option (the company charges $15 for it), but Brian Lawrence, a consultant to the wedding-invitation industry for 15 years, predicted that traditional stationery companies would play the role of disapproving in-laws.
“The whole wedding industry is based on tradition and formality, and if someone is spending $200 to $300 a person at a nice venue, a QR code projects informality and doesn’t make a good first impression,” he said.
Representatives from Crane & Co., the 211-year-old stationery company practically synonymous with tradition, think otherwise. The company has tested QR codes (typically black and white, though they can be any color) across its five types of printing processes and will offer them for all invitations come fall.
“I don’t turn my nose up at how people are communicating,” said Eliza Browning, a seventh-generation member of the Crane family and the vice president of Crane’s Digital. “We will always offer classic, timeless paper correspondence, but we need to anticipate where the market is going.”
She dismissed the idea that the codes would stick out on elegant stationery like a guest in shorts at a black-tie affair, though to help dress up the squares, Crane’s may offer the option of a monogram at the center. “Just because it’s a technical icon doesn’t mean we can’t make it beautiful,” she said. “If you engrave it on an ecru 100 percent cotton notecard, it’s beautiful because the craftsmanship makes it beautiful.”
The effort may be lost on non-tech-savvy guests.
Gwen Schmidt, 38, of Pittsburgh, used the code to direct guests to an R.S.V.P. Web site for her Oct. 9, 2010, wedding. “I think mostly people didn’t notice it if they didn’t know what it was,” she said.
Like most couples using the codes, she took the precaution of also printing the Web site’s address. It was partly for guests who might not be clued in to the codes, but also as a kind of insurance in case of code malfunction, the specter of which looms over most couples who choose to use them.
Ms. Chalaban and Mr. Swain, both 35, borrowed phones from co-workers to test their code’s compatibility with
iPhone and
Android systems, and spent about a day working out kinks. “It was saving Jan. 1, 1900, as the wedding date,” Ms. Chalaban said, laughing (now, anyway).
Ms. Dinh used her iPhone to test every one of her invitations, which (with her now-husband and the designer) she spent 12 hours hand-cranking on a 1920s letterpress.
“Some places the letterpress pushes down harder than others so the color was too uneven, and the code wouldn’t work,” she said. “And some versions we had to throw out because I just didn’t like what they looked like.”
