Although I’m fairly sentimental, I’ve come to the conclusion that sending physical cards – either for invitations or holiday wishes – is something of a waste.  While it’s fun to get a tangible card, it’s pretty obvious where it ends up, and very quickly.  (Note: If the cards you get go somewhere other than the recycling bin, like a scrapbook or card box, please accept my admiration – and ideally some of my cards.)

Invites

Using online invitation sites not only helps you reduce the waste of physical cards but also makes it easier to plan and keep track of invitees and attendees.  The old standard is certainly evite, which has a whole bunch of cool features and articles, but there are other fun options.  Pick the one that best suits your needs:

• All “new school”?  Already on a bunch of social networks and want your invites to integrate with those sites?  Try Socializr.
• Anyvite makes it easy for you to send invites – and to share the resulting pictures with friends.  It’s also fully mobile!
• Like it real simple and organized?  Hate registering?  Go with Mobaganda or Goovite.

Greeting E-cards

Sure some e-cards can induce seizures with their bright, quick flash animations, but there are a few sites – some that don’t even pose a danger to your loved ones – whose cards will be actually be appreciated:

• Want to make a difference just by pressing “send”?  “For every eCard sent, Care2 makes a donation to an environmental nonprofit to save a square foot of rainforest.”  Talk about a low-effort way of doing good!
• For stylish customizable cards, try MyPunchBowl.com.
• How about sending a (non-tacky) musical greeting? Postcard.fm lets you upload your own picture along with the perfect song from your computer.
• Yearning to send a clever message? Hipstercards has what you desire. (I like: “Naughty or Nice? Do I have to decide right now?”)
• If you want full-on snarky, Someecards is one of my favorites.  Their tagline is “When you care enough to hit send!” and they have a plethora of hilarious cards. (Holiday wishes include the festive: “There’s nothing like holiday cheer to offset devastating seasonal affective disorder.”)

Any favorite card sites that we neglected to mention? Comment and tell us what we missed.

Posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Gift Giving, sustainability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.