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I'd heard lots of bees say this too! We didn't have this problem though... It's funny because they are so clear! :) ha!
I think it's partly a generational thing, Save the Dates are still sort of a newer concept. My friend's grandparents were so confused by them, they wondered why she and her fiance were sending out invitations over 6 months in advance! I think as long as it says, "formal invitation to follow", people should figure it out!
Our guests didnt think they were invitations, but we did have a few people RSVP on our website right after the save the date. Honestly I think people are probably just RSVPing on the website because they have the option to do so and if they know they are definitely coming or not coming then why not tell you early? That way you dont have to wait months and months for an actual card to be sent back.
We sent out STD magnets so we didn't hear of anyone thinking they were the actual invites.
not yet, but we only sent out save the dates to a few key people (like our moms) and were really clear about them 'just being a rreminder' (ours also say 'formal invitation to follow' to dispell confusion).
Well STDs are a relatively new thing. In fact, with the exception of my own wedding, I have not received STDs for like the last dozen or so weddings I have attended. Our STDs were obvious that they were not invitations as I had them done as business cards and simply tossed them in with the Christmas cards months before the wedding.
only some of our our older guests think they were the invites. it's definitely a generational thing.
We've had people ask us right after we received the STD whether we're going or not - they still sent an invitation with an RSVP card but I guess wanted a head count early. Actually I think all the recent weddings I've been to I've received some phone call or email saying did you get the STD, do you think you guys can come? I just chalk it up to people excited about the wedding, but it does make it confusing knowing when you're supposed to respond and if you've technically already responded.
As the PP said it is a realtively new thing, in fact I never heard of them until joined Wedding bee, all weddings ever been invited to were just the actual invites. I know if I had done STD's people in my area would have been confused also.
Yup. No one has tried to RSVP, but tons of guests think it's our official invitation... even though it says SAVE THE DATE - FORMAL INVITATION TO FOLLOW. I guess they'll get it when they receive the actual invite?
Save the Dates are definitely only 5 years old or so at this point, I have good friends who got married in 2002 and we were just talking about this, how they weren't even heard of back then. So I can see where older generations may get confused -- though I do think it's funny! :)
@elliestan: and @missa2152:I know, right? He even helped design the invites... The save the dates are a photo post card and look nothing like the invites we designed. Oh, well. It still makes me laugh--definitely worth the face palm for the entertainment.
For my first wedding in 2003 we had many people try to RSVP from them, even though it stated Formal Invitation To Follow as well.
Our Save the Dates just went out last week, and so far I haven't had anyone contact us... and Invitation to Follow is printed pretty small at the bottom.
I did have to explain them to my guy though... he didn't really understand them at all. So I sorta wonder if his whole family is just confused by the entire thing and haven't called us yet :)
OMG this is driving me crazy...please READ people!!! A whole bunch of my guests were mentioning that they thought it was the invitation, wondering why I would send a magnet for an invite...um it says FORMAL INVITATION TO FOLLOW right on the last line!!!
whew I feel better.
I never really understood STDs. I think the invites should go out earlier than "etiquette" dictates - maybe 3-5 months - so people can make their travel arrangements and clear their schedules. No STDs are needed. How can you expect to plan a wedding if you don't know how many guests you'll have? I don't get it.
Anyway, IF I sent out STDs, I'd actually appreciate the "no" responses coming early. Helps me plan the final list better!
I only thought to send them because the last 2 weddings I attended sent them, and I really appreciated the "heads up" so I could plan...loved the magnet idea. I still have them on my fridge! (well they are both cousins so it's also a family pic).
But we do have many west coast relatives that need to plan so I figured what the hell I'll do it, plus it was fun, I designed the whole thing myself and just uploaded it to Vistaprint for printing so they are very uniquely "us" and a nice keepsake.
And I only have one "no" so far so I'm glad I didn't overestimate the "nos" because we have a limit of 220 on space!
Yeah, some of the older people thought our magnets were invitations. All they said was we are getting married and the date so I guess that it can be confusing. I listed the website and on there I said that formal invitation will be sent to try and end the confusion.
Now i don't think the people we sent ours too were terribly confused, but they were pretty explicit.
However, I remember receiving a save the date about 4 years ago and being thourally confused. At that point neither I or my friends had ever heard of such a thing and we all kind of laughed about how silly a 'pre-invitation-invitation' was at the time.
I have been to about 2 dozen wedding sence then and I would say only about a third of them had save the dates. so if the older people on your list are confused I probably woudln't blame them, they probably just haven't seen them before.
I realized why people were a little confused.....PEOPLE DON"T READ THE DARN THING!!!
A couple people received ours and didnt read it. I found out because when I talked to someone I knew, I asked them if they checked out our wedding website, which was on our Save the Dates. She was confused. She didnt know about it at all. She didnt see it on the Save the Date.
Good grief. If you would have read it, you would have seen the website address!!
It's definitely generational and depends on location. In my small town no one does save the dates and so if we sent them out people would be confused (and not just older people haha).
We have not had sent out our Save the dates yet, but when we sent out our engagement party invites we had someone think it was an invite to the wedding, though it CLEARLY stated across the top of the invite Engagement Party.
http://boards.weddingbee.com/topic/engagement-party-invites-2
I guess it depends on people's experiences with weddings. Nobody has commented that they've thought ours were invites...especially because we specifically state "formal invitation to follow" on our STD.
My grandparents were the only ones confused. They had never heard of save the dates before. LOL. It was very cute..."How do we say we are going to be there?!"
Most people I sent mine to seemed to understand it. My mom however...oh boy. She was adamant that I send out STDs since we're getting married labor day weekend, but when I brought her the proof she was like "uhh I don't get it, is this an invite?". SIGH
My FI doesn't grasp the concept of them either. He seems to want me to send them out so we can see who will actually come, and then only send invitations to those who respond that they are coming.
I gently told him that he just needs to give me his list of people, and I will handle that part of the planning 
Here is some of the exact wording on our STD:
SAVE THE DATE
For the wedding celebration of [Me] and [FI]
24 June 2012, [location]
Invitation to Follow
[wedding website address]
It's an online card (AS IF I would send email wedding invitations!) with a reply function. I'm getting replies that ask how to rsvp to this invitation! If they thought that this WAS the invitation, why don't they think that they just rsvp'd????????
Only a few people have though that. And they were all older than 50. So I think that the younger crowd is more hip on this kind of thing. One person who is of the older generatin that we invited was not even aware of what a STD was until I specifically told him that ours was the save the date and not the invitation, to keep the date open.
Weird, all my guests had no trouble understanding that our STDs were not the invitations! I mean, they said "Invitation to follow" right on them lol.
@ProfessorGirl: I work in web design and clients do stupider things like that all the time lol.
lol... this happened to me too... a few people thought they were the invites
my save the dates were online only and people still thought they were the invitation. like, why would i send an invitation with no real information about the wedding (other than the date)? haha. but to be fair, one person said it was the first wedding she'd be invited to, so it's understandable that she's not familiar with the idea.
I suspect it's not just generational, but also what people might or might not expect based on wedding plans. For example, if you live near both families and are having a pretty traditional wedding nearby, there's not actually a need for save the dates and that might catch people off guard.
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I really didn't think I was going to be confusing everyone so much!
I sent out Save the Dates, and now I have people RSVPing on our wedding website, calling me, and when I went out this weekend I had someone ask me how they are supposed to RSVP. Are Save the Dates that new? I guess I don't know. Our's even say (rather boldly) Formal Invitation to Follow.
Have any of you experienced an issue with this?