- Blog
- Bios
- Boards
- Classifieds
- DIY
- Gallery
- Vendor Reviews
- Shop Weddingbee
Weddingbee boards
I did not send std's ... I'm happy I didn't. It built anticipation and everyone is dying over our invitations right now! I would never have been able to get the reaction I'm getting over the invitations we created together ... which took FOREVER we struggled over doing perfect invites ... so I say no. Do not send them! We are also expecting like 170'ish to come ... so it's a smallish wedding (for us).
I have to say, I wish I hadnt sent save the dates. I admit, it's fun and exciting to get your date out there and let people know when you're getting married, but it also binds you to inviting every one of those people. I had people who were so excited that we got engaged, so of course I wanted to invite them to the wedding, But now I never talk to them. My STD's were cheap and easy, but if I could do it over again, I wouldnt. Just my thoughts on the matter! Happy planning! :)
i sent my stds via email - no printing, no postage. just me, a photo, ppt and pdf.
we did it because we only had 9 months and people needed to cross time zones and country lines to get to the wedding so we wanted to give as much advanced noice as possible. it also forced us to figure out our invite list early in the process which helped for planning purposes. it prevented the ad hoc "let's invite the neighbor" situation.
Oliveyou- thats what happened to me ... everyone was so excited and especially at places I frequent every week and I told like 3 different places I wished I could have a table for them ... but obviously now ... I'm maxed out on space ... uhh bad move.
I'm not sending STD's, but I'm having a very small wedding (~50 or so guests) and most are from in town.
Definitely don't have to. I did, but that was because my wedding was over a holiday weekend.
I don't think that STDs are a must, unless you're getting married out of town (like WAY out of town!) or on a holiday weekend. And that's just a courtesy...which could be taken care of via email, word of mouth, etc. like you've already mentioned.
I also ran into the problem of having to invite a few people that I didn't really want to invite due to my STDs...but it was just 4 couples, so I'm not really crying about it.
Personally, I really enjoy Save the Dates, but I do agree that they are not necessary. I think its one of those things that if you have the room in your budget (and the time!), you should totally do.
However, they don't have to be expensive or time consuming if you do want to do but don't have the resources--emails, evites, or even printing the info on a photo in Kodak Gallery or Shutterfly are all perfectly great ways to get the word out. It's not a deal breaker either way. I just really love having them on my fridge or bulletin board for the few months leading up to a friend's wedding!
Def. not a must depending on the wedding. For me, a def. must. FI's family lives across the country and I doubt half of them would show up if I didn't do STDs. Also, e-mail not an option for me, as most of his friends/family don't check their e-mail often or even have e-mail! (what the heck.. crazy, I know.)
I really enjoyed making my STD and people think they are amazing.
The reasons:
I agree that it totally depends on the wedding. 95% of our guests are from out of town, and my immediate family and friends from home will have to travel across the country, so we're sending save the dates as a courtesy so people will know well in advance. That being said, I've been to five weddings this year that were all out of town, and all had save the dates, but I generally didn't make my travel plans until I got the invitation and it was closer to the actual date. So I'd say, if you don't think you need them, don't send them!
It depends on you and your wedding. I am getting married on a holiday so I need them to make sure people dont make other plans such as travel or just basic holiday plans. We are having about 150 people come and for me that seems quite large. STD's are just an easy way to send out a quick note to people we definitely want to go since we do not have e-mails for everyone. I just like the formality of this.
We told our nearest and dearest when the date was, and the word spread from there, so we got away just fine without doing STDs.
We are sending our save the dates to those few guests that we can not imagine not being at our wedding. And even though we will be TELLING everyone our date, doesn't mean they will REMEMBER! the hard copy save the date on the fridge will keep it fresh in their mind.
I had originally not wanted to do the STD thing because I thought it was a waste of time and money. But then our list grew from 150 people to 300. And then it went to a destination wedding or 5 hours from my home town. So not only would his family/friends have to travel but mine too. I thought that word of mouth/email/etc would be fine but then I caught wind of a friend having their 30th bday party that same night and my mom's friend trying to get their circle of friends to go on a cruise. These people all knew the date but I guess because they didn't have something to remind them they had forgotten.
So I choose to do a photo of the two of us and printed them on vistaprint. Used a coupon and got them for $94.00 (taxes and shipping included). Not bad.
I didn't send STDs, but I did make sure that the people I love the most knew about the date well in advance!
I did it cos I had an idea I really wanted to send out, but they are absolutely NOT necessary! If you don't want to, you definitely don't need to!
I think STDs are really cute and I've seen so many wonderful ones around WB. However, in our case, we decided not to send them. We had around a year to plan the wedding and weren't inviting lots of OOT guests. I figured it was easier just to talk to people in person and give them the information. I do think STDs would have been cute, but we just didn't need them, so we saved the money/time.
If you don't have alot of OOT guests, I really don't think it's necessary!
I decided not to send save the dates. As awful as it sounds, I am worried that I might want to change my mind on inviting somebody. We have a room that holds 100, and with family and my mum's list, it leaves us with some tough choices of who to cut. I wouldn't want to send a STD and then regret it. I hear loads of nightmares about people who send out STDs and then change their mind/ want to scale back wedding etc
the majority of our guests are flying in from overseas (canada, UK, australia, taiwan, singapore... and thats just off the top of my head!) and so we think save the dates are quite useful. also, they're fun!
STD's are a recent trend and not something traditional - and with the size of your guest list, holy smokes girl will you save yourself a lot of costs on postage alone if you skip them!!!
It sounds like you've informed everyone who needs to know, so you're good. Save the headache for something that really matters...
I am a crafter at heart, so I wanted to do Save the Dates. I just talked with my friend about this though and I don't think you have to do it by any means. We were worried about the out of towners, which is all 250 of our guest list!
The hardest part is whittling down the guest list so early on. I had a situation where the groom asked for several people's addresses to send invites to. A friend and I never got Save the Dates, never got invites, didn't go to the wedding! I had it on my calendar until I realized that everyone else HAD received their invites. Apparently they ran out of space, but he never said anything to us! I wanted to make sure that didn't happen to any of my guests, so I tried to err on the side of too little. (yes, i know that's crazy to say w/ 250! but it's true. i want everyone i know to be there... but $$ won't allow that!)
If you don't have a ton of people traveling, I wouldn't worry about them.
So we are having huge issues over the guest list. The only issue we are having at all as a matter of fact.
My plan for the save the dates are to send one to everyone that I really really want to be there and then to not send them to people who are far away and I am just inviting because of social or family requirements. That way those people are more likely not to be able to attend. I know it sounds wrong but the two groups don't talk and I really want to keep the peace between my family and my future in laws while still having a wedding I can afford and that I want.
The upside is that you still get to send save the dates and save money at the same time. I feel awkward at times when making choices but as my grandmother said people understand you have to make tough decisions when it comes to weddings.
We are not doing STDs, and 90% of our guests are out of state. We're in the "they're not traditional" camp and I didn't want to be bound to inviting people so far in advance.
Also, sending STDs gives people more time to plan to come to the wedding, which means more RSVPs (we have a lot of really distant relatives on our list). Also more time for them to think about adding extra people, and more time for them to say "Why didn't you invite Cousin So & So?"
It just seemed like more negatives than positives for us.
I'm in the same situation as Mitla. We aren't doing save the dates and most of our guests are from out of town. But we're having guest list issues, so we kind of don't want some people to 'save the date'. I know that might sound horrible to some of you, but we can only have 250 people in our venue and our families make up about 180 of those people! We'd like it if the random cousins didn't come so we can open up room to invite our friends.
That said, at this point (we've been engaged since last November), all of our family and our close friends know the date. I'm going to send out the address of our website when I send emails to get people's addresses, so we figure that people can get all of the necessary information through us or the website.
It did make me a little sad though - I had some killer ideas for the cards..... :o)
I agree it's not necessary, but helpful for out of towners. We're concerned about making sure we meet our minimum guest list, so we plan to mail save the dates. We have a number of people who are across the country and some out of the country. I sent an email to a small number of folks to let them know that we booked our wedding venue and that we'd mail out official cards when we returned from our recent trip...now the question is whether to mail them to everyone or just the people we think need them. Thoughts? I think we can at least skip immediate family.
@juju - I think you could just mail them to the people who need them, but since you are doing them, I'm sure the people who don't need them would love them!
Hi again,
Quick update--decided not to mail out save the dates. Instead, we're going to send save the date emails to a larger group, but this time they will be more official in that they tie in to our wedding website (we're using weddingwindow.com) and include more info, e.g., our room block. It saves money and time...
My husband is a computer geek (lol) so when we got married we did a lot of things online. He designed a site for us, which looked great, and put up an initial page for the STD. A couple of months later he updated it to have a dynamic guestbook on the front page and do all the RSVPs online. It saved us a ton of money on envelopes and stamps.
Btw ladies, if you don't like cookie cutter wedding sites like myself, you should check out www.mymuto.com and have someone custom design and make the site for you for cheap.
We didn't do them, and I don't regret it. We had a small guest list (less than a hundred) and people knew from word of mouth what our wedding date was. We sent out the invites a little early to compensate so people who needed to travel would have enough advance notice.
I think they're cute as heck though - some of the ones I've seen on here have made me almost regret not having them.
We did STDs because our wedding is on a holiday weekend and more than half our guests are from OOT. We just sent them out last week and have been getting lots of compliments on the magnets. I guess not too many people have seen STD magnets before around here!
not exclusively, but primarily, if you're in the twenties and thirties you may be competing with other couples you or your guests know and their wedding dates. You want to send save the dates so that you get in before anyone else they may know.. if that makes sense. You dont want to invite out of state or area couples 2 months out bc thats not ample notice either. Save the dates are piece of mind!
You must log in to post.
| Visit our sister sites | eHarmony Online Dating |
eHarmony Advice Dating Advice |
Project Wedding Wedding Songs |
JustMommies Pregnancy Calendar |
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
I'm planning on a 150-175 guest list - only very close friends/family. Other than they are 'cute', I can't think of a good reason to send STD's. Anyone who is planning on traveling will get an email/note from me. Everyone else, I will tell in conversation over the next few months. My wedding is 13 months away, so I have plenty of time. Plus, I don't want to find myself with the 'I sent them a STD, I must send them an invite' issue.
Are STD's only to avoid having to personally tell people you've picked a date? Am I missing something? I'm ready to cross those off a 'to do' list and saving on printing and postage because I'm finding them unnecessary.
Thoughts?