Looking for advice on invitation timelines for a destination wedding! My wedding will be early Oct 2019 in Colorado. We're having 80-100 guests and it will be a destination for everyone other than my parents and sisters. I'm trying to figure out when to send what! I've seen that the typical timeline is to send invitations 6-8 weeks out and have an RSVP deadline of 3-4 weeks but that seems to short of a turn around for a wedding where everyone needs to travel and book rooms.
Our venue comfortable holds 100 and we're sending invites/STDs to approx 120 if we were to give all friends a plus one. We're expecting to have several declines from family (about 15-20) that we don't think can make it due to travel. Because of this, we are having a b-list of friends to invite as family declines so we don't end up with only 60 people. We're also hoping for some early declines after sending STDs but don't want to bank on people getting back to us.
So with all of that in mind and wanting to make sure we have time for b-list guests to make travel arrangements, my current timeline looks like this:
STDs - early Sept 2018
Invitations, first wave - early June 2019
RSVP Deadline, first wave - late July 2019
Invitations, second wave - late June/early July 2019, depending on declines
RSVP Deadline, second wave - late August/early September
Is this a reasonable timeline to have? Is three months enough of a heads up for second wave invitations? Is late July too early for an RSVP deadline?
One last piece! We also have a crazy month in September 2019 with my fiancé's brother getting married, my friend getting married, and needing to fly to Colorado for visits and planning so I don't want to be following up with a bunch of people in September if it can be avoided.
Thank you for your thoughts!
