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Cool, thanks Miss B. By the way, I have to ask, is that Scarlett O'Hara in your avatar? Because if it is, you totally win best avatar (in my opinion).
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We sent our save the dates almost a whole year (11 and 1/2 months) in advance. Our wedding will have at least 100 out of town guests and it is also over a holiday weekend so we wanted to give them plenty of advance. We played around a little with wording of "one year from now" ... type of thing. People loved it! We've had a really long engagement so it was nice that people were "reminded" that we were indeed getting married ... but it was still a little while away. So far we've gotten great responses from the save the dates.
Could/would you ever collect email addresses as well to send a little reminder to book the hotel rooms and flights? We plan to do that about 6 months before, send an email to as many people as we can (and have our parents call the few we cant - they are mostly their friends anyway!) just to say "okay now you really should book the hotels and start looking into flights".
As for the invitations, I think 2 months before is a good time frame for not too late not too early. We plan to do this because our wedding is around New Years and we dont want them to get lost in the holiday card pile! I also have another cousin who is getting married a month before - so we are trying to coordinate our stuff so we don't send them at the same time. (We're both in each others wedding, busy busy time!!)
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I was a bridesmaid for my friend's wedding last October in Vermont (8 hours away for me!). Since it's such a popular month for foliage viewing and hotels fill up fast - she included a second sheet of paper in the Save the Date envelope with hotel information. Simply 'Hotels in vermont book up early this time of year, so we have set aside a block of rooms at these hotels....'.
It worked out great for both the bride and all those who were invited!
@ Niki- why yes it is! Funny story, really... I was trying to think of a cute user name for the boards and came up with this one, but could not figure out an avatar. I google image searched "burgundy" and that picture was one of the first things that came up! Even though I'll be wearing a white wedding dress, I'm in love with Scarlett O'Hara's ruby accent dress and would love to wear something like that to get my marriage license, should we decide to get married before the wedding! I suppose I should copy my explanation over to the contest thread...lol.
@ HumarockBride- I think it's a great idea to collect people's contact info and to do periodic reminders and updates if they have expressed they would like to attend. We are having a long engagement as well, and I love your "One year from now" idea for Save the Dates! I might do a magnet for a Save the Date, that way it won't get filed away somewhere...
@ luminarie- We are in a similar boat, although our guests won't be commuting quite so far. We are in the Southern California area and are having our wedding in Yosemite, which tends to book up a year in advance. Hence why I'd like to send out invites kind of on the earlier side, and so that people can save money for hotels or planes or whatever they need.
We were in a similar situation (summer resort location on a holiday weekend), though maybe not quite as urgent as Yosimite. We sent out save the dates 9 months prior, with our website, which had all the lodging information. About 50% of our guests have already booked, with 5 months to go and no prodding. In your case, I would suggest sending out save the dates a little over a year in advance, and including both your wedding website link, and lodging information. Noting that Yosimite fills up fast will probably get most guests going on it. And, you can bring it up whenever anyone asks you about how the wedding planning is going too (and have your parents do the same). Say "I'm so excited that everyone is booking their lodging and will be able to join us" or something like that.
We will be sending out our invitations 3 months prior, just to remind any stragglers so they can hurry up and book something. I wouldn't send them any earlier than that for the reasons other people have mentioned. I know that it seems like if everyone has already needed to book lodging by then that it is a little silly to send invites out that late (you'll probably already know who's coming even if they tell you when they book). But, there will probably be details that are best to wait to carve into stone on your invitations (times, whether you'll have any other activities and their locations, etc.)
Wow! There is such variety on when people send out invites! I'm really amazed.
@ IdahoSummer: *headdesk* Putting a website on the save the dates is a GREAT idea! I was so worried about how I was going to cram so much info on a little magnet... but that totally works!
Miss Burgundy -- Websites are the BEST -- we have had more then half our guests visit our website within a week of receiving the save the dates!! (I have a tracking system on mine, it's google analytics!) It so cool and super helpful for people to get more information. Our save the dates were so simple:
Please save the date of 01.02.2010 for the wedding of *me* and *him* Boston ... www. ourwebsite .com
That was more then enough to direct people there and help them realize that they need to book hotels!
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we're a transatlantic couple- and 1/3 to 1/4 wedding guests will be flying from the UK.
we sent STD 10 moonths before- as soon as we had booked venue.
we'll be sending UK invitations 3 months before, US ones 2 months before.
if I were you, i'd send STD up to a year in advance, keep updating website- perhaps put a note in the guestbok asking people to sign up for your "newletter". I'd send the actual invite 3 months b/f
I'm in a similar situation. Our wedding is in North Carolina, and our families will be traveling from Wisconsin/Minnesota. Our wedding is June 13. As soon as we set the date we let everyone know so they could start making plans. We sent out a save the date email back in October, with a link to our website that had all sorts of info so people could start making travel arrangements and reserving rooms. We also sent our invitations early, just this last weekend (see my post about the post office. Sigh).
Four months before the wedding is a bit early. But if people have far to travel, they should already have a good idea if they are coming. We also wanted to send them something more 'official' than our email, to let them know we really are having a wedding, and that they should make their reservations, ask off work, etc. soon. We also wanted to get a good idea of the guest count sooner rather than later. The rest of the wedding projects (how many centerpieces, escort cards, table numbers etc.) we have to make depend on the number of guests.
So, hopefully the invitations don't just get set aside. Nah! They won't. They're too purdy!
Miss Burgandy-we too are having a destination wedding for most of our guests and the area is small and really only has one large hotel. We sent our save the dates 7 months in advance and our invites are going 3 months before the wedding with rsvps requested 6 weeks prior. (not what Martha Stewart would recommend, but its my wedding...tee hee)
The thing is, what you really want is to give people a heads-up so that they can plan their vacation time and budget (if they are so inclined) to include your wedding. That is what the save-the-date is for. Sending an actual invitation a year in advance almost guarantees that most people (including me, and I am super-organized) will just misplace it. And an RSVP returned more than about 6 weeks in advance is probably not a good indicator of actual attendance, as people's circumstances do change.
The norm seems to be an STD 5 - 6 months in advance, invitation 8 - 10 weeks in advance, and a request for RSVPs 3 - 4 weeks in advance. Of course this is dependent upon your plans. For an expensive destination wedding, you absolutely want to give your guests more advance notice. I would think that your STD around 9 months in advance, invitation 3 months in advance would be reasonable.
I actually don't think that more advance notice is really going to increase your attendance, so it's probably not necessary. Really, if I can't save the money to get to your wedding in less than a year, I'm probably not going. And if I have another set of plans that I am so attached to that I make the reservations a year in advance, I'm probably not changing them just for your wedding unless I'm a member of your immediate family - in which case I probably already know the date.
Thanks for all the advice. I still have no idea what I'm going to do:D
The thing is that one of my cousins held a destination wedding in Hawaii a few years back and I recall my mother got a save-the-date magenet from them about 8 months in advance, but was horribly confused as to why an invitation didn't follow until about 2 months before the event. Despite the fact that they had a website up on their save-the-date magnet and all that, she thought it would be proper to get an invitation before making arrangements to attend. I'm sort of worried about the fact that people won't really know what to do, like her...
I hear ya, Miss Burgundy. I don't know that I would be comfortable forking over hundreds for airfare without a proper invitation. Plus, the farther away a wedding in distance the further away in time people will know if they plan on attending. Most people don't decide to go or not to go to the Dominican Republic on a whim. And if you're inviting close relatives/friends you shouldn't have to worry too much about people changing their minds without notifying you, or someone who will let you know. A few months (three-ish) in advance for invites should be fine.
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We're setting up a website and sending out the STD's in October for a May wedding with the website listed on it.
The website is going to be sent out to family and close friends (our age people who we really want to come to the destination wedding but we know have to budget).
The invitations won't be sent out until about March. Normal time.
Oh I'm so glad this thread is here! Our closest guest lives 1.5 hours from our venue, with many driving 5+ hours or flying in... I'd hoped to avoid save-the-dates all together and do just one mailing (soon-ish) with follow-up phone calls (instead of 'formal' invites), but I keep second guessing myself...
Are save-the-dates really necessary?
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It's not that save the dates are necessary, it's that giving people advance notice of the wedding when they will have to make special travel plans is necessary. So long as you let your out-of-town guests know well ahead of time when your wedding is, you are in the clear. Call, write, smoke signals...it's up to you!
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I sent out STDs 8 months in advance and it had information directing people to our wedding website, where we posted hotel information, etc. BUT, no one except for my dad has booked their hotel! There are two other events the same weekend in our city and rates are about to skyrocket and I even put that up there! If people don't book their hotels until 2 months before the wedding, there really may not be any more hotel rooms to book! I have a block of rooms, but the way they do it is they block 5 rooms and then once they fill up, they open up another 5 rooms. So, if the hotel books up with people for the other guests in the meantime, I've only got 5 hotel rooms for mine. Gah!
Also, I'm going to be super busy with work about a month and a half before the wedding and don't want to also have to compile rsvps along with everything else before the wedding. I think I'm just going to send them out like 4 months early and have a 2month out RSVP date.
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My wedding is going to be a destination wedding for everyone we are inviting (most guests will be driving 6-8 hours or flying in) and the venue I have selected books up pretty far in advance. My question is: is there some kind of proper protocol for the amount of time in advance to send out invites? If I sent them out even 8 months before I think it might be too late. My MOH wants me to send out Save the Dates as soon as possible, and then invites about a year in advance so people can save money for the trip and mark it on their calendars. Is this acceptable?
I don't really know anything about destination weddings so I just don't know what the standard is. Thanks!