Save The Dates/formal Invitation Timeline???

We booked our venue fairly early too... what we did was a staggered approach with our save the dates so absolute must have people (e.g. parents, siblings, wedding party contenders) got the save the date straight away. We then gave ourselves a deadline of end of this summer (just under a year in advance) to have sent all the rest of them, we've been drip feeding them once we feel confident someone should make the cut, but as our venue will require overnight stays for anyone attending we really didn't want to leave anything too late. We currently have 8 spots left, and I'm really glad we saved them as I'm strongly considering adding someone who was "just a new colleague" when we booked a venue but has now turned into a great friend who I think deserves a spot over some of the extended friendship group people that I've never really been that close to but I maybe would have put on the list 6 months ago.

Formal invites we're going to send January/February for our July wedding (again, because it requires an overnight that gives any B lists time to actually book somewhere to stay).

Hope that helps!

Congratulations! I was the same and literally Sent save the dates the next day, but I learnty lesson! Fromy experience, whilst you are excited to send out ASAP, I would wait to send save the dates about 12 to 15 months before. The reason I say this is you may over time asses your guest list due to changing friendships and budget. We had several people on our list who we thought were absolutely must haves, but as time went on we found we had drifted apart from them, not saying it will happen but you can afford to wait and be sure of your list and that the numbers work.


Formal invites nornamly go out 4 to 6 months before, again you don't want to send too early, people accept but then if you have a lot of time before the wedding and they forget, something comes up or their life changes (new baby/partners and you then have to have conversations about these extra people not being part of the plan when they had accepted before so it can get tricky.
Please don't think I am being a downer, it is so exciting and is easy to get carried away, but from experience this is my 2 pence worth!

Hey! So we did save the dates 1 year out and formal invites will be 4-6 months before. This is because the menu choices will be on the formal invites so for us it depends when these are sorted and if you want it included on your invite! 😊

We did Save the Dates about a year (maybe slightly more) in advance and then actual invites were 6 months in advance. We haven't had any trouble with wanting to change who we invited as we have quite a small family and a well established friend group. Only slight issue we had was one of my FH's "mates" who he invited on the stag and (thankfully) only to the evening do, didn't bother turning up on the stag or even messaging but to be honest I haven't even worried about that as our evening food is bacon and egg sandwiches so not overly expensive or fancy and if he doesn't turn up I will eat his LOL. I was more annoyed for my FH and the lack of etiquette, I haven't met the guy and couldn't care less about him!

We got engaged in Sept '21, had our venue booked by Nov '21 with a date of Aug '23. We sent our Save the dates Dec'21 with our Christmas/holiday cards because:
A. We're getting married over a bank holiday, in the summer when people are likely to plan trips away
B. To save on postage...C. We had a lot of people asking if we'd set a date yet, and with the exception of our very close family, we wanted those who we absolutely wanted to be there and thus needed to know to find out together. So we sent them 18 months ahead.🤷‍♀️ we're going to send our invites Feb/Apr '23 (we haven't quite decided yet) but know we'll ask for RSVPs at least a month before we need to!I think the time of year you're getting married makes a difference, especially if you intend to invite families with kids (whether or not the kids are invited) because if you're getting married in a school holiday, those people may plan holidays 12-18 months ahead. At the end of the day, you do you! 🥰