Not a "proper" invitation?

The Black Cat (my youngest sibling) complained to the Senior Cat that she had not received a "proper" wedding invitation. By that she meant a fancy, printed card inscribed with her name.
We pointed out that nobody got one of those. Nephew and Nephew's Now Wife did things the modern way. They sent the invitations by email...because everyone on their guest list has email. Most people on their guest list are as environmentally conscious as they are. What is more they were paying for their own wedding. They didn't expect parental help. 
In the old tradition of course the girl's family paid for the wedding but her parents, while well enough off by the standards of their own country, are not rich. No, they would do it themselves. 
And so the invitations went out by email. They looked just like a printed one might. If you had printed one off in colour on a nice piece of paper or card then it would have been very nice indeed.
    "Good idea," someone at the wedding told me. Others agreed. 
I thought of it again yesterday as I was reading a blog post on Awfully Big Blog Adventure.  Other things change too. Anne Rooney wrote a post about how "The Tiger Who Came To Tea" now seems "old-fashioned". 
Things have changed. What people have to eat, when they eat it, where they eat it, and how they eat it has all changed. Mothers are now shown as going to work, kitchens have microwave ovens and far fewer pots and pans - and much more. 
And social expectations and relationships have changed too. I found the blog post rather sad. It made me aware, yet again, of how much modern children miss out on. I thought of Anne Barrett's description of  the working class "tea" of the Singer family in "Songberd's Grove". They sit down to the meal together without the distraction of radio or television, phones or any other screen.  They talk. In Margaret Storey's "Pauline" the mothers don't work and one of  Pauline's aunts makes buns for tea but the other - single and working - comes home with cake. Now there is talk of "take-away", pizza, Chinese and so on - accessed through a phone call. My memories are of standing in the fish and chip shop and having the order wrapped first in "butcher" paper and then in newspaper. You tore the top open and dug your hand into the hot, greasy, salt-stickiness of the batter and the chips. No, fish and chips in a polystyrene box or cardboard container is not the same.
But the wedding invitations? Yes of course it would be nice for some people to have the invitations as a keepsake. But, is it really necessary? It was the wedding itself which was the important thing. It was watching my nephew break down trying to sing his bride down the aisle - break down because he genuinely does love her and care for her.  It was hearing them exchange the vows they had written themselves - because to do so was important to them.
That's what really mattered. It was what we were there for - not because of a piece of card.