How long before the wedding are you sending out your invitations?

We sent ours mid February allowing a 6 week period in which to RSVP. Once that time is up, we have 5 weeks until the wedding. That's worked well for us.

Just make sure you leave enough time after your RSVP date to chase people up in time to get final numbers to your venue. We only have to confirm ours a fortnight before so that gives us three weeks to pester people who've not responded!

We get married 2nd week of August - our RSVP deadline is end of June, and invites going out early May at the moment.

When does your venue need final numbers by? Assuming it is the average of 6 weeks before, then sending out the invitations 2 months before is too late.

Work backwards... final numbers needed 6 weeks before (in this example), you need about 2 weeks to chase the latecomers, so RSVP deadline should be 2 months before. People should be given about a month or so to receive the invitation and work out if they can come, so you should send 3-4 months in advance.

I was planning giving the caterer final numbers 1 month before the wedding, I have allowed an extra month for late RSVPers (will give them a couple of weeks before chasing).

Oh heck, now I am worried it's too early.

Was going to send them out about in May.

My SIL sent hers in Jan asking guests to reply by end of Feb for an end of May wedding.

We're sending ours out this week, with an early June RSVP date, for a wedding at the start of Aug. We didn't send out save the dates (though I think we told most people when the wedding was) so wanted to make sure the invitations went out earlier rather than later. We will still have a couple of months to chase people if they've not RSVPd on time.

With the exception of a few family members, all of our guests are local so our invites only went out in mid-february for our mid-april wedding. I'd have sent them out earlier if our guests were going to be travelling a distance and would need accommodation, transport etc - plus I work in our venue so they're not as worried about getting final numbers in good time and well... they know my breakfast numbers anyway. Pre-order is done with the exception of the kids meals and my incredibly fussy brother (not sure he's actually going to come to the wedding breakfast but that's a whole other story)

I'd say it also might depend on how good you think guests will be at responding. Our evening guests are terrible - mine have an excuse, I work with a lot of them and none of them know who's going to win 'Cat's wedding lottery' and get the night off yet lol. His are mostly rugby mates and as such totally blokey and disorganised. I'm assuming from his responses via facebook most of them are coming but that I'm never gonna get a piece of paper that says it lol

No from the looks of things you've got yours about right!

I need to get thinking about them then... having a meeting with the venue next month to talk about timings etc so will be in a better position after that. We've picked the design and it's from vistaprint so shouldn't take too long to order.

Thanks everyone - I'm glad I asked!!

We sent ours out in October 2010, rsvp 1st March 2011, wedding September 2011.

No doubt far too early for many, but it's worked fine for us particularly as many people have to travel some distance and need to work out how much it is going to cost them particularly as many are considering staying overnight.

A lot of "how soon is too soon" is simply based around how far your guests are travelling to get to your big day.

Personally I think the "6 weeks before" is far too late when you have so many other things to be dealing with, and perhaps harken back to the old days when the brides parents handled the invitations so the bride and groom were left simply to deal with little things like final fittings.

Crumbs, we're certainly early - we get married 1st Oct and we're hoping to get the invites out first week of April.

We are getting married 90 miles from home, so people will have to book time off work, travel arrangements and accomodation, though, which is why I wanted to send them out early.

Feel stupid now ?

Don't you need to be organised when people need to travel. TBH mine went out 8 weeks before the wedding and I wish I'd been able to manage them about 10-12 weeks before and mine are all local (within 20 miles) except for my sister in London and his sister in Yorkshire (wedding in Scottish Borders in case anyone's nosey!)

NEVER feel stupid - your wedding your rules!

It seems the tradition of sending invites out 6-8 weeks before seems to be slowly evaporating!

We are getting married at the beginning of September and as we are only having one set of guests and not splitting the day into day and evening invites and are limited to 80 guests we actually have a ‘definite’ invite list and (for want of a better word) ‘reserve’ list so we are actually going to be working to two RSVP dates.

The first for the ‘definite’ list will be 30th May and the one for the ‘reserve’ list will be 30th June.

We also have to have our final numbers to the venue by the 14th July so that allows plenty of time to chase the inevitable stragglers!

Fruitbat not at all! We are getting married about 200 miles from us, and it will be about 350 miles for most of my family so, although most of them already know and have made arrangements for travel & accommodation I still wanted to send ours early for the same reason!

As I said above we are getting married in September but will be sending first round of invites out in April for RSVP of 30th May and then the second wave out for a final RSVP date of 30th June.

We'll be sending ours out well early! Married Aug 25th 2012, invites will go out Jan or Feb next year. Purely because we're married on the bank holiday weekend and want to give the guests a chance to get the hotels booked early to get the best deal. Also we're not sending STDs so want to give lots of notice so as not to stress people. RSVP will still be around June though.

I was planning on sending ours out at the end of April with my RSVP date being 6 weeks prior to the wedding in July.

3 months before ?

We're hoping to send our day invites out just after Easter (late April) with a RSVP date of end of May, chase through June, send evening invites out once we have declines from the first batch - about late June for RSVP deadline of end of July, chase through August, get final numbers in September for wedding on October 22nd.

Phew! that looks like a lot of work!

I got an invitation 2 weeks ago for my cousin's wedding in August - so about 6 months is looking quite normal these days.