How important are save the dates?

Mom is right.

My mom said basically that exact same thing, ha. We didn't send any, they're not necessary.

They aren't a necessity. I did them because we have a ton of OOT guests. You can absolutely do them or skip them if you want. It's a personal preference.

I am sending them. But for me.... my family is all coming from out of town. Whereas my fiancés family lives close by.

They're fun, but not necessary.

Your mother sounds like mine. She asked why we had to have professional engagement pictures taken and wanted to just take some with her phone.

We had real engagement pictures taken.

If you want save the dates, do them.

We did them because 90% of our guests are OOT.

They're not necessary. People these days are very busy, and most people need to take off work pretty far in advance. Also, if you get married during a busy time of year or high travel time (like summer) it helps people block out your date on their calendar.

Not necessary, but we did them because we liked the idea...well I did anyway.

We sent them, but now that I look back on it we could have skipped them. We only paid $96.00 dollars for 110 STDs which wasn't too bad.

They're not important if you're having a local wedding without many OOT guests. We did them because we're having a DW.

Mom is right. I think they were made up by vendors and sold to couples who couldn't wait to make it official. Just stick around and read the forums. You'll see that they cause more problems than they solve (i.e., "We sent a STD to someone we now want to disinvite..."). Weddings, long distance and local, have gone off without a hitch for decades without these previews to an invitation. A phone call, an email, or a post card are all that are necessary to give OOT guests a heads up.

You can get nice ones cheaply at vistaprint.com if you choose to do it.

We're doing them, but almost all our guests are OOT. We are also only inviting very close friends (wedding party) and close family, so we are 100% sure of our invite list.

If most people are local, or you aren't 100% sure of your guest list, skip them.

They are expensive, time consuming, and they tie you into a guest list too soon.

We're just sending them to OOT family, so we'll probably end up sending 15-20. OOT friends and anybody that is in town isn't getting them. Most of them have the date already, but FH was really excited to design them so we'll send a few our.

I paid $30 for 100 on vistaprint but I have a lot of OOT guests. Its up to you.

Not necessary. I will not be using them.

We sent them but we thought it was necessary for us. We have a ton of OOT guests plus my most of my other works guests work in industries that require more than the 8 week notice an invitation will give.

I think it is customary now so that people can "save the date". However, if you stay in contact with everyone and they already know the date it may not be necessary for you. It also depends on how busy your guests tend to be. Both of our families travel a lot so we needed to let our guests know. We hit a Vistaprint sale and got exactly what we wanted (expecting to pay 1-1.5 /each) for approx 33 cents each! So if you shop around it's definitely doable.

We are doing them simply because of a destination wedding to allow our guests plenty of time to book accommodations.