Do I have to do Save the Dates?

It depends. Most brides do send Save-the-Dates because many of their guests who travel need advanced notice to take time off work. If you are looking to do a small, intimate wedding, it probably can be done via word of mouth.

It's all up to you, if you have a lot of out of town guests, the STDs can be useful so they can make travel arrangements etc... but they're not a must.

I personally did not do them, I already spoke to our out of town guests, they have all the info and we text everyone with the link to our wedding website, we sorta used it as our save the date.

August is plenty of time for a wedding next year. Invites don't usually go out until about 2 months ahead of the wedding.

I agree, it depends..another factor is, if you are like too nice or feel bad saying no, you may end up like me and have sent out STDs, now wishing my guest list wasn't up to 150..Looking back I would have waited and just send out invitations early. I mean it's not a huge deal, it's just my dad added some more people recently, if I knew awhile ago I would have been more cut throat with the guest list. But in general, I do think people appreciate getting the STD so they can plan well in advance.

I will say that I am glad I used them. I had several people tell me that they were glad they got them because other things had come up and they declined because of the STD I sent.

I did not do offical STD's but word of mouth was good enough in my case

They are a good idea. Especially where your wedding and some schools spring break may coincide. May keep them from planning a family vacation on your wedding weekend. I did postcards and they were really inexpensive. I did 120 for about $65, including postage.

Our wedding is the same month as yours. We are having an out of town wedding and alot of our family lives out of town. I sent out save the dates with our hotel info on the back.

Thanks everyone! We do have a lot of out of town guests, but I think most of them are aware of the date, however it would probably be nice to do the STD's anyway. Postage is so expensive, so maybe we could do a cute postcard one that might be cheaper to send.

@Future Mrs. Landeros when did you send your STD out?

We didn't do a postcard we did magnets, but ours were only .44 to send. I don't think the postage for the magnets on the STD cards will be higher. There's not going to be any added ribbon, etc...

We did postcards, vistaprint.com has 100 for free very often..I uploaded a photo of FH and I onto it, just 28 cents postage to send those out :-)

I wont be doing save the dates I am just gonna had out my engagement pictures as my save the dates.

For a destination wedding, yes, unless you plan to send the invitations out that early (like 10-12 mo.). I think they're also a good idea if you will have more than a handful of out-of-town guests. Basically, I think sending them is very considerate of anyone who has to travel and would need at least one night's accommodations. If everyone is local, than I don't think they're important. I'd just give the OOT invitees an informal heads-up in that case. No reason to send out 100 save-the-dates because 5 people would be traveling.

I'm only going to send out maybe a few out of 150 guests invited. i have one friend and few relatives who live out of town that i would like them to attend, but other then that nope. i feel like i'm pushing it by having 150 guests.

Send out STDs-especially if you know you want to send a photo out-people like getting them. And, while people may know the date, it lets out of towners know for sure they are invited (even with family, you never know when a family member might just do a super small wedding and not invite extended family)

I am getting married a week after you! i sent out my save the dates last month. we are having a semi-destination wedding and almost everyone will need to travel/book a hotel.

we made 4"x6" sized magnets with one of our engagement photos. i also put the wedding website address so i didnt have to cram so much info onto it! i spent $75 on 90 save the dates including postage.

We did STDs because we have a lot of OOT guests and also because I found STD magnets that I loved and really wanted to do anyway

We didnt do STD so that we could spend more money on the wedding. Word of mouth worked wonders in my case. With todays technology FB, and email are wonderful for these kinds of things!

I think you should let all your guests know what date you plan on so that they can arrange travel plans but I really dont feel an actual STD card is needed.

I have ONE OOT guest.. so I really don't need to.. but... I want to because I think they are cute

Vista Print usually has great deals on postcards that are perfect for this sort of thing.. that way it's inexpensive and very custom to you and your personality.