Starting with the disclaimer that this is not law. These are the general dates to send out invites and why. If you are an anxious bride and want to send them ASAP, you do you boo boo. If you are a procrastinating bride who is waiting till the last second, live your life. There is no invite police patrolling early or late mailers. Do what makes you happy. Now to get to the good stuff, if you’re like me who hates reading and just looks for the bolded words, don’t sweat it I got you covered. All the dates are in bold so feel free to skim.
SAVE THE DATES
This one is the very loose on an exact date to send. Some people suggest sending 4-6 months out, however I recommend 6-12 months out (I am one of the anxious brides if you can’t tell).
Especially if you have a lot of out of town guests or what not I would suggest more of the 6-8 months out…if 6 months doesn’t feel like long enough, lets be honest real quick. How many of your guests are going to actually book flights and try to find accommodations a year out. So if this is stressing you out not sending it at 12, just think if you got a Save The Date, would you be looking at flights and buying them right this second? If the answer is no, just hang on to that 6 month number, if the answer is yes, let’s compromise and just go for the 8 month mark.
If you are a destination bride, I would recommend sending them between 10-12 months out. This is more of just a courtesy so people can try to plan for the event, whether it be financially, finding babysitters or what not.
Side note: The 6-12 months also is supposedly determined by how long your engagement is. If your engagement is on the longer side, then 12 months is socially acceptable, if it is on the shorter side go with the closer months.
WEDDING INVITES
There is a more strict timeline for wedding invites…or per se a more known timeline for wedding invites. In general wedding invites should be sent between 6-8 weeks before the big day and let me tell you why.
Now stick with me, I have had a few people try to fight me on this but there is a good reason. The main reason being RSVP’s. Typically you set your RSVP due date to be about one month before wedding. So, this gives guests 2-4 weeks to send in their RSVP’s which doesn’t necessarily seem like a long time but riddle me this: have you gotten an invite where the RSVP date is so far out that you stick it to your fridge and then end up forgetting about it? Same. The bride always ends up texting, asking what your answer is, thinking she gave you plenty of time for it, when in reality it was too much time. That RSVP is a thing of the past. No one cares about it, it became one with the fridge, you don’t even notice it’s still there.
Short RSVP time is crucial. That plays into next weeks topic but we will get there when we get there.
Destination Brides your time frame is going to be closer to the 12-16 weeks before the big day. This gives people plenty of time to figure out firm accommodations and flights without feeling stressed. Bonus is you get to request your RSVP’s a little earlier too since people will most likely RSVP before buying a flight…or so one would think. Also from personal experience destination venues need final counts earlier than local.
If you didn’t send a Save The Date then your time frame will be on a spectrum of the previous two. Anywhere between 8-16 weeks before the big day. If you know you will be having a lot of out of town guests, I personally would recommend going closer to the 16 weeks before time frame.
Remember, none of this advice is law, these are just the common questions I get from clients often.
Next Wednesday, no more tracking people down, we’re talking about best way to get rsvp responses.
