When You Should Send Out Your Invites & Save the Dates

A common question I get asked is “When should I send out our Save the Dates or Invitations?”

Save the Dates are a fairly new step in the invitation process. Our generation is busier and travel more than any generation before us. Hence, making Save-the-dates a necessity. You should send these out anywhere from six months to a year in advance depending on your crowd. If you happen to have a wedding vendor friend tell them as soon as you lock in your wedding date. I’m begging you, because we are constantly booking weddings even as far out as two years in advance. I wish I could scream that from the rooftops you guys.

Invitations on the other hand should be sent out at least six weeks in advance. I would suggest eight weeks to be on the safe side. You will request your RSVP cards back two weeks before you need the response. You’ll want time to hunt the people down who haven’t responded yet and time to record those responses before delivering your final count to your rental company, venue, caterer, and other applicable vendors. You might also want to consider adding additional routes for your guests to RSVP such as email or on your wedding website.

ADDITIONAL TIP: Don’t forget to take a sample of your invitation suite to the post office to make sure you are purchasing the appropriate amount of postage. You can also request that the post office hand cancel your invitations instead of having a machine process the canceling. This means a post office employee will hand stamp over the postage to prevent the stamp from being used again. The machine can leave behind extra ink or damage the envelope.