Sending out your wedding invitations can feel like a super important decision. Do it too early, and your distant family and chat-once-a-year friends might forget! Do it too late, and everyone might have already made unmoveable plans.
But don’t worry. There is no need to panic because the sending-dates don’t matter as much as some old-fashioned people might suggest. We will explain why.
When To Send Wedding Invitations?
You should send out your wedding invitations when you have a venue, know some accommodation choices for faraway guests, and are aware of the ball-park figure of people you want to invite.
You shouldn’t send an invite more than a year and a half before the wedding, only because it might get lost in tons of other mail and nick-nacks your guest will receive in the meantime.
Traditionally, wedding planners would suggest sending out invitations 6 to 8 weeks before the big day, but you won’t be giving yourself, the caterers, or the accommodation sites a lot of time to organize everyone. Your guests might even have made other plans by then.
6 to 8 weeks is only 1 – 2 months, and in this day and age, people’s timetables move too quickly for such a short period of time.
Instead, we recommend sending out invitations as soon as you can. Tell your guests where the wedding will be, the time to arrive, and where they can stay. As long as it’s not over 1 ½ years away, this will give your guests ample time to secure your special date in their diary.
How To Make Sure People Remember Your Wedding Invitations?
Sending out your invitations early could make you anxious about people forgetting about it. With endless forms of social media, gimmick purchases, and online contact, there are a myriad of ways to make sure that no one forgets your wedding.
Before we start, we should reassure you that no one will get sick of your messages either. You can post about your wedding content without it being the main topic of conversion that your friends and family see.
Refrigerator Magnets!
Using Amazon or Etsy, you can buy refrigerator magnets to send in the post along with your wedding invitation. These magnets can have your wedding date on, so when your friends and family receive their letter, they can keep a friendly reminder in the one location you know they will be visiting every day!
Social Media Posts
Most social media platforms have a feature called “Stories.” These stories allow you to share videos or pictures for just 24 hours. They are perfect for content you want to share with people without it being the main feature on your dashboard.
This means that stories are the perfect way to remind your guests about your wedding without drowning their feed with your content. When you start place-setting shopping, snap a picture and upload it as a story. Trying to figure out the best songs to play? Take a video of you and your partner dancing, and add it as a story with the caption “Which one is best?”.
These silly little tasks that help create your wedding will feel natural in your stories while reminding everyone of the upcoming event.
When the big tasks come, like buying a wedding outfit or re-visiting the venue, you can take a picture or video of the location and post it to your central social media Post platform. This is the platform where the content stays unless you delete it. For these big moments, you will want everyone to see your posts, including your future self.
When the big day is only two weeks away, you can start a countdown on your stories, so even the low social media users have a chance at seeing the reminders.
Email Reminder Two Months Before
If you haven’t received any confirmation from a handful of invitees by this point, you can send a helpful reminder that you need to know if they are coming, where they want to stay, and their dietary requirements.
The email is both a helpful reminder of your event and an important request for information.
Should I Bother With RSVP Cards?
RSVP is a French abbreviation for “respondez, s’il vous plaȋt,” which means “respond, if you please.” Although that might be the literal translation, it really means “respond please.”
You need a response to know how many people need food and rooms and who is coming to the event. However, that doesn’t mean you need to send a card. You can add the RSVP information on your invite and ask your friends and family to respond by email.
Really you can use whatever method makes the most sense to you. Older guests might prefer a mail-in option, and younger guests might prefer an online method. Either way, give your invitees the ability to respond to you, so you can feel confident in your wedding numbers and possible dietary restrictions that need to be sent to the chef.
Summary
You should send out your wedding invitations as early as you can so your guests have time to add you to their diary, but do not send out the invitations earlier than one year in advance.
Add “save the date” magnets to the invitations, so your guests can add them to their refrigerator as a constant reminder.
Once you have been added to everyone’s diary, you can make sure people remember the date by posting on social media every so often with wedding-related fun pictures. Keep the posts to your stories, though, so it doesn’t clog up people’s feeds.
As the wedding gets closer and closer, post more often, and you can branch out to the social media platforms main page.
A month or two before the wedding, text or email anyone who hasn’t replied to your invite, and encourage them to respond.
