Save-the-Date vs. Invitation: When to Send Wedding Invitations

A save-the-date is a card containing essential information about an upcoming wedding. Once you and your partner complete your wedding guest list, you can start to send these preliminary invites to everyone as a heads-up to keep their schedules open for your wedding date.

This also ensures everyone has enough time to make the necessary travel arrangements. Some people even send save-the-date magnets so guests can put them on their refrigerators as constant reminders of the upcoming event.

Make your save-the-date card succinct. These are the essential elements you need to include so people can prepare for your special day:

• Location: Specify the city and wedding venue where you will host your event. Even if you plan to have a local wedding, recognize some guests might have to travel to see you get married. This information becomes even more important if you want to have a destination wedding, in which case everyone will need to plan their travel schedule in addition to keeping the day itself open.
• Names: On these wedding cards, provide the full names of both you and your significant other, plus a blurb specifying the purpose of the brief letter. Some people choose to include the names of the bride’s mother and father if they have paid to host the wedding.
• Wedding date: As the name would suggest, the primary purpose of a save-the-date card is to encourage people to mark the date in their personal calendars to celebrate your wedding. With enough advance notice, this helps ensure as many people as possible can show up to your nuptials.

A wedding invitation is a more exhaustive and thorough version of your save-the-date requesting someone’s attendance at your ceremony and reception. These formal invitations often include extra inserts like engagement photos as keepsakes, as well as more information about how to RSVP and what to expect on the day of the wedding. While the save-the-date design is often simple, formal wedding invitations might make use of a more ornate stationery suite.

Your formal wedding invitation should reiterate all the information your save-the-date cards provided, but you’ll need to include additional details. Here’s what to add when you send out actual invitations:

• Logistical details: Use your invitation as an opportunity to iron out more specific wedding details for your guests. Specify whether you’ll have childcare on-site, expect parents to handle their children themselves, or prefer to have a child-free event. Let people know if they can bring a plus-one. Provide suggestions about hotels as well as other relevant travel information.
• RSVP information: Let people know how they can RSVP in the body of your official invitation. Include an RSVP card if you’d like them to send you a confirmation in the mail. As an alternative, keep things completely digital. Provide a link to your wedding website in this case.
• Wedding website URL: In this day and age, your wedding guests might appreciate an online resource to RSVP, access registry information, and learn your wedding hashtag or anything else they need to know about your nuptials. Provide your wedding website URL if you have one. Many couples choose to have the aesthetic of their wedding website match that of their wedding invitations—for example, both elements might incorporate their wedding colors.

Save-the-date etiquette states you should give your guests ample time to pencil your event into their calendars. Try to send these out a year to six months before your big day. This gives everyone plenty of time to prepare if they plan to come.

Wedding planning can be stressful, but it’s essential you remember to send out invitations in a timely manner as you get ready for the event. When it comes to these formal invites, wedding etiquette indicates you can send them two or three months before the ceremony and reception.

Have a wedding to plan? Learn how to take on the process strategically. Discover Mindy Weiss’s approach to setting a budget, choosing a theme, and sending invitations when you sign up for the MasterClass Annual Membership.