When the paper goes out

Two mailings doing two different jobs

A save the date books a day in someone's calendar. That is its entire job. It needs the names, the date and the town, and nothing else. It is not an invitation and it does not ask for a reply.

An invitation asks a question and needs an answer by a deadline. It carries the venue, the time, the practical details and the RSVP date.

Conflating them causes two familiar problems: save the dates that arrive with so much detail that people think they have already replied, and invitations sent so late that guests have made other plans.

One rule binds them together and it matters more than any timing advice: anyone who gets a save the date must get an invitation. A save the date is a promise. Sending one and then cutting the person is the worst outcome in this entire subject, which is why the list has to be genuinely settled before any paper goes out — and settling it is its own piece of work.

When each one goes out

Save the dates go out once the date and venue are locked and not before. Roughly six to eight months ahead is comfortable for a domestic wedding. Send them earlier — closer to a year — if you are marrying abroad, in a place needing flights and accommodation, on a public holiday, or during a period when your guests will be booking other things.

They are optional. If your wedding is soon, skip them entirely and go straight to invitations; two mailings a few weeks apart confuse people rather than help them.

Invitations go out roughly two to three months ahead for a domestic wedding, and three or more if guests are travelling internationally. Earlier is not better: an invitation arriving six months out gets put in a drawer, and the RSVP arrives late anyway.

If you are working to a compressed timeline, this is one of the elements that compresses well — the guide on planning in under six months covers what does and does not.

The RSVP date is set by your caterer, not by etiquette

This is the part people get wrong, and it is the only date in this subject with a hard external constraint.

Your caterer or venue will require final numbers by a specific day. Work backwards from that: your RSVP deadline needs to sit far enough before it that you can chase the people who have not replied, get their answers, and still submit the count on time. Two weeks of chasing time is a reasonable minimum, because you will need it.

Ask the venue for that final-numbers date in writing when you book, and put it in your plan immediately. It is the anchor the entire paper timeline hangs off, and couples routinely discover it only when the venue asks.

The schedule tool places these on real calendar dates from your own wedding date, which is more useful than a generic "eight weeks before" because it tells you which actual day to do it on.

The people who never reply

Some proportion of guests will not respond by the deadline. This is normal, it is not personal, and you should plan for it rather than be surprised by it.

Build chasing into the schedule. Treat it as a task with a date, not as something that will hopefully not be needed.

Chase by phone or message, not by post. A second card gets the same treatment as the first. A text gets an answer.

Split the chasing. Each of you takes your own side. It is faster and much less awkward than one person calling people they have never met.

Ask a direct question. "Are you able to make it on the 14th? I need to give the caterer numbers on Friday." A deadline that belongs to a caterer is easy to respond to; a vague reminder is easy to defer.

Set an internal cut-off. Decide in advance what you will do with non-responders — most couples count them as not attending and are usually right.

A few practical things

Address the envelope to exactly who is invited. This is where the plus-one and children rules are communicated, and doing it by name prevents almost every awkward conversation about who was meant to be included.

Weigh a complete invitation before buying stamps. Card, insert, envelope and any extras together frequently cross into a higher postage band, and finding out at the counter with a hundred of them is a bad afternoon.

Order extras. Ten per cent more than your count, for mistakes, late additions and the one you will want to keep. Reordering a small batch costs disproportionately.

Proofread against the venue's own website. The single most common error on a wedding invitation is the address or postcode, copied from memory. Check it against the source.

Editor's notes

Written by Wedding Checklist Free about the piece above — not reader submissions.

1. These are almost the only numbers on the site

   Six to eight months, two to three months, closer to a year for travel. Elsewhere this site refuses to print figures, so the difference is worth stating: these are conventions about posting paper, not claims about what anything costs or what anyone typically spends.

   They are also soft. A convention has no authority behind it, and the post says outright that save the dates are optional and that earlier is not better.

2. The only hard date on the page belongs to someone else

   Your caterer or venue sets a deadline for final numbers, and every other date in this subject is arranged backwards from it. This site cannot tell you what that deadline is — it varies by supplier and it is written into your contract.

   Which makes "ask them, then work backwards" the whole method. Setting an RSVP date from etiquette and discovering afterwards that it lands too late is the failure this section exists to prevent.

3. One rule in this subject has no exception

   Anyone who receives a save the date receives an invitation. Everything else on the page is a convention with room in it; that one is a promise you have already made, and taking it back is the outcome people remember for years.

   It is also the practical reason the guest list has to be genuinely settled before any paper goes out, rather than settled enough.

   Settling the list first