Net can help get ready for wedding

Just because we can, it doesn't mean we should. This modern truism carries over to our e-mail use, as we should use more personal or tangible means to send news of certain events, like a death or a wedding.

The latter may be changing. While the majority of the current generation still employs engravers, calligraphers and postmasters to transmit the happy news, the up-and-comers see nothing odd about sending wedding invitations over the wires. Down the line, it's conceivable that someone will propose through an e-mail message, and someone else will accept.

The invitations and the proposal are the last pillars of analog wedding planning, but they are already eroding. Kristin Ciccocella founded WedAlert.com 11 years ago as a "wedding portal" to provide couples in love with a centralized place to manage all the details of the big event. She says weddings are like almost every other modern business transaction: E-mail is the best way to select vendors, compare prices and make the initial contact with people who can provide flowers, catering, photography and music.

Ciccocella said there is a limit to how far you can go in managing your wedding electronically. You may find some vendor online, tell it what you want and barter the price. Sooner or later you need to actually make contact.

You can rely on the Internet for a lot of things. With a band, you can log on to its Web site and hear streamed versions of its songs, making the audition an unnecessary step. Sooner or later you need to talk to the band members in person, if only to determine they are lucid enough to get to the reception on time.

Using electronic invitations or even routing someone to an e-vite type page isn't the faux pas it once was. Still, you need to consider your audience, one relative at a time. There are certain aunts who will take offense at an electronic invitation, if they even have a mailbox they check more than monthly. In this case, you need to follow up with a phone call or a note, which can defeat the timesaving characteristics of electronic communication.

There are compromises, where you could send out a fancy vellum invite with the option to respond electronically. This may be the preferred option for everyone, aside from the aged aunts. Most people will use their PCs to organize some aspects of their weddings, and an electronic RSVP can only help.

Not counting the aunts, everyone you invite to a wedding will check their e-mail regularly, and there will be no one to say you need to do things the old-fashioned way. Or that's the theory.

Some people will want to hang on to certain traditions, and it won't hurt to keep some of them alive. That is, until there is a way to preserve data as a memento.

As for electronic proposals — tech advances notwithstanding — it probably will always be a good idea to look someone in the eye as you ask for his or her hand. But everyone is different. And Ciccocella thinks that it may be entirely appropriate for any couple that met online in the first place.

If you have questions or suggestions for Charles Bermant, you can contact him by e-mail at cbermant@seattletimes.com. Type Inbox in the subject field. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.