When to send wedding invitations? A step-by-step timeline

When to send wedding invitations? A step-by-step timeline

Send them too late and some guests will already have booked something else. Send them without a reply deadline and the answers arrive in the final week. Timing the invitations has its rules, and they are worth knowing before you sit down to the envelopes.

The general rule: eight to six months before

For a wedding at home, invitations go out roughly eight to six months before the date. That is how long a guest needs to book time off, sort accommodation and plan the rest of the summer around your weekend - and in high season you are competing for that date with several other invitations.

Shorter notice happens and it is not a disaster, but the closer you get, the more people answer with "we've already got something on".

When to send at the longer end

Go for eight months rather than six if:

• ·you are inviting guests from abroad - cheap flights are booked far ahead, and for some people that is exactly what decides whether they come
• ·the wedding falls in high season, on a long weekend or in the holidays
• ·most guests will need accommodation
• ·the venue is half a day's travel away

Save the date - what it is for

A save the date is a short heads-up: the date and the town, no detail. Send it twelve to nine months before the wedding, right after you have booked the venue.

It has one specific purpose: to claim the date in people's calendars before anyone plans something else for that weekend. It does not replace the invitation, it comes before it.

The easiest way is a text, a Messenger message or Instagram. The website can go live with just a countdown and the basics, and you fill in the rest before the invitations are printed - same address, no second send-out.

Month by month

The website first, then the printing

This is the step that is easy to forget. If the invitation is going to carry a QR code linking to your website - and that is now the neatest way to avoid stuffing three inserts into every envelope - the site has to exist before the stationery is printed.

Building the site takes 5-7 working days with us, and the code comes back to you as a print-ready file for your printer. Plan it for around nine months out, so the invitation design is drawn with the code already in it.

The RSVP deadline - the most important date here

The venue usually wants final numbers a month to six weeks before the reception. Work backwards from there and leave yourself a few weeks for chasing the stragglers. That puts the RSVP deadline roughly two months before the wedding - and that date belongs on the invitation, in plain terms.

"Please let us know by 15 April" works. "Please let us know when you can" does not work at all.

Why online replies change the shape of this

With replies by phone and text, the last weeks before the deadline are a run of calls and notes in a notebook. With an RSVP form on your website, guests answer when they are actually holding the invitation - often the same evening they scan the code.

You also get something paper never gives you: a live view of who has already replied. The reminder goes only to the people who have not, instead of to your entire list.

If the invitation is online only

The rules are the same, only delivery changes. Paper takes a few days in the post, a link arrives instantly, so at short notice an online invitation can rescue the situation.

There is one more difference: the text on a website can be corrected after it goes out. The blessing moved, or a new hotel opened nearby? We fix the page and everyone sees the current version. With paper alone it is a round of phone calls.

A week is enough at our end

Our standard turnaround is 5-7 working days from the moment you send us your material. If the print deadline is closer than you thought, get in touch and we will agree something realistic.

Have a look at the themes and see what a finished site looks like.