Chinese New Year Invitations

The biggest festival for the Chinese across the world and across all boundaries, irrespective of where they are residing is the Chinese New Year.

The fifteen day festival heralds the arrival of the new, and bidding adieu to the old year. Steeped in culture, superstition and thousands of year old history, one of the highlights of the fifteen daylong celebrations is the New Year Reunion dinner.

The Chinese New Year Dinner also known as the Nian ye Fan; is mostly held at the house of the eldest member of the family, or at a convenient place or a restaurant near him. All the family members are supposed to be present for this dinner.

Thus , what better time to send an invitation to the family and friends, in asking them to be present , letting them know that their presence will matter in saying goodbye to the old year and welcoming the New one? Thus sending New Year invitation is also an integral part of this celebration. To bring families and friends together, an invitation is enough, but if it is sent in an innovative and artistic manner; it adds value to the original event.

Adding an unique touch to the cards

The best way of creating an unique New Year invitation card, is to create the design by yourself. If you are artistically inclined, then, you can create unique and personalized cards by using scrapbook techniques or using various rubber stamps.

In this modern day, one can also use a computer to create these cards. One can opt for a desktop program or a card-making application to create your custom cards. Before the New Year, even the help of the children can be enlisted, to give a different twist to the conventional invitation cards, by using their fresh imagination. Get some construction papers and colorful markers, and the children’s out-of the-box thinking will amaze you. An extremely innovative way of invitation card can be creating cut-out shapes and sending out the invite in them. You can also consider using certain clip-art design to create fun-filled and personalized invitation cards.

Let us now have a quick look at certain traditional symbol which can be used to give a touch of uniqueness to the invitation cards.

Some traditional symbols which can be used are –

• • Animals – Every year is a pre designated year of one of the many Chinese zodiac signs.  It can be the year of the rat, the year of the dog or the year of the monkey. Small pictures or drawings of the appropriate animals will lend a touch of authenticity and tradition to the invitation cards.

• • Paper Lanterns – The lantern festival being an integral part of the Chinese New Year celebrations, using pictures or cut outs of the same is surely going to leave the invitees amazed.

• • Chinese Characters – Chinese characters are unique and can create a distinctive flavor. Just be certain to use the characters related to luck, prosperity, wealth, health etc. as these are most suited to the New Year invite theme.

• • Use of Red – Red is considered to be the most auspicious color. Thus while creating cards make abundant use of red and gold color.

• • Blooming plants: – blooming plants are also symbols of prosperity, new life and growth.

• • Dragons – Incorporate Dragon symbol in the cards as they represent strength and good luck.

• • Fireworks – Fireworks too are spectacular and symbolic enough to be used in invitation cards.