Save the dates or invitations

Save the dates are a new concept and informal. Invitations are expected to be sent out 6-8 weeks before the wedding.


Countless weddings have come and gone without save the dates and still have 75-100% attendance. Actual invitations are mandatory if you plan to have guests. They include reply cards. Don't rely on all of your guests to reply online. Even if your older guests are computer savvy, they don't see online replies as proper for a wedding. For any other event they would be ok with it.

We are having people rsvp through the website as well. November 21st!!!! ❤️
Think of the save the dates as more of an engagement/wedding announcement/heads up for people who are going to be invited.
I feel we still need to send actual invitations with some of the details on it as well as the direction to rsvp on the site.

View Quoted Comment I won’t count on older ppl but I want them to reply on my website Or maybe even phone but I won’t be doing rsvps

View Quoted Comment I was thinking of just doing invitations with all info on them just to save money

View Quoted Comment Absolutely understand that. Plus you can always use that money for something else in your wedding celebration!

My aunt is getting married in September and she flat out no to save the dates because “the people who I want there already know the date.”

My cousin and his FW have had to postpone from June to August so they’ve sent out two rounds of save the dates.

View Quoted Comment Everyone except my grandpa have access to internet and i wouldn’t mind doing like phone or text ones as well I just don’t wanna keep track of paper ones

View Quoted Comment The oldest person invited to our wedding is my father and he is going to be 56. I figure give them time and then track down the ones who don’t like you would with paper.
I feel the same way you do.

We did all online RSVPs thru our website and had no issues! Even older people were able to figure it out with no problems. People won’t reply to a save the date though because that’s just like hey look at your calendar and see if you’re free. Invitations are sent closer to the wedding and they require a response. We sent save the dates 8 months before and invitations 2 and a half months before.

I sent save the dates and encouraged family & friends to rsvp on my website. Unfortunately, I only received 8 rsvp out of 140. Many older folks don’t understand save the dates and asked me about when I’m sending invitations because going online would be too big of a hassle. I’ll most likely send invitations a month before the wedding

The online RSVP is great! Shouldn't be a problem there. But you'll still need invites. You can skip the STDs, but you can't skip the invites.

We did digital save the dates, paper invites, and online RSVP.


To save money you can totally skip the save the dates. Those aren’t necessary. But you definitely need invitations (digital or paper).

Like I said we did paper invites and digital rsvp... almost everyone rsvpd online. Even my 89 year old great uncle managed to do the online rsvp 😂 I had a couple friends just text me that they were coming and had to mark them down (I think it was just out of laziness, not website difficulty or anything lol). But other than that, no one seemed to struggle with the website, not even the elderly guests.

But just in case, it’s definitely a good idea to include an alternative way to rsvp. What we did was we included a details card that listed the website information and saying “please rsvp using the website. If you have difficulty using the website, you can reach us at (phone number) or (email address).”

Just do invites because save the dates are the optional ones

View Quoted Comment I was thinking of just doing invited and doing digital rsvps and if you can’t just text or call . But idk how that would be for food and stuff ? But if I’m having a buffet it wouldn’t really matter right?

View Quoted Comment You only need to request meal choices if you are having a plated meal and your venue needs pre-counts. Buffets just require guest total. Also, if you do the RSVP on a wedding website, they even allow for menu selections. WeddingWire, The Knot, and Zola are the 3 most popular free websites choices, but there are others as well.

View Quoted Comment Our meal is buffet too. I didn’t think it was necessary so I took the meal option off the rsvp part of the site.
It’s really easy. I test drove the rsvp process so I’d know what everyone will see.