Kannada star ‘Daali’ Dhananjaya’s ‘inland letter’ wedding invitation grabs eyeballs

BENGALURU: Aghast at the exorbitant rates of wedding cards presented to him, Kannada star ‘Daali' Dhananjaya has opted for a humble yet unique approach: Customised invitations inspired by the traditional ‘inland letter'.


"My original plan was to use genuine inland letters for the invitations," said Dhananjaya, who has also acted in Telugu and Tamil movies, including the blockbuster Pushpa. "But eventually, I agreed to a custom design inspired by inland letter. I was shown invitation options ranging from ten to hundreds of rupees. Instead of spending so much on cards, I felt it would be better to invite more people to the wedding and feed them. After all, who keeps an invitation card after the event?"

Dhananjaya is set to marry Dhanyatha, a doctor, on Feb 16 in Mysuru. The creative invitation, designed by art director and his close friend Baadal Nanjundaswamy, is packed with symbolic details. The postal seal features the wedding date, while the stamp showcases the iconic Mysuru Palace. The invite also humorously mentions it is the wedding of "an actor and a doctor".

The move has gone viral, but the process of inviting guests has left the actor physically drained, with seven thousand invitations printed. "I planned to invite everyone in person over a week. But Bengaluru's traffic made it impossible. After a week of constant travel, I barely covered a small portion of my guest list," he admitted. "Some friends are helping me deliver the rest of the invitations, and I'll have to invite many others over the phone. In hindsight, printing the invitations on real inland letters and mailing them would have been so much easier!"

For Dhananjaya, inland letters are steeped in nostalgia. "As a student living in hostel, I wrote letters home and came to value the inland letter's simplicity. Later, during my college years, I had a long-distance relationship and would write letters to her in Delhi," he reminisced.

Meanwhile, Nanjundaswamy said the invitation is "as much about storytelling as it is about tradition and innovation".