Save The Dates

They're only needed for destination weddings, recommended for local weddings if you have a lot of out of town guests. Our wedding is local and we do have some family from out of town being invited, not a whole bunch but we are sending them. I know it isn't a necessity, but these are my reasons. I mainly just want to give people a heads up because

1. It's wedding season when we're getting married and I don't want them to have previous commitments.

2. Our wedding is on a Sunday so if people want to plan to take off the following Monday, they know ahead of time (to save up PTO if needed).

3. Let our few out of town guests know where we're having it so they can plan accordingly

Also I just want to send out a cute little card with our engagement photos on it, almost like an engagement announcement I guess and something for family to have with our photos

I skipped them entirely. they definitely are not necessary. but then again, if you want to do it and it's cheap to, go for it! you can even do a more informal version like email or something

We are only doing STDs for people that have to travel and make travel arrangements. If they are local, they will only get an invite.

In our case they were needed for a few reasons.

1. More than 50% of our guest list was out of state.

2. We are 25 & 29, so basically everyone we know is getting married right now ESPECIALLY in the summer.

We skipped them and went straight to invitations primarily because our wedding was less than 6 months away; however, even if we had more time, I wouldn't consider them a necessity.

I agree with PP. They aren't absolutely necessary for our wedding, as it's fairly local. We do have a few out of town guests. But one of the reasons I wanted to send them is because our wedding is the Saturday after Memorial Day. So, my concern is that if people don't know the date well ahead of time, they may blow all their time off on the holiday weekend, then have nothing they can use for my wedding weekend (for anyone who wants to come in the day before, for example).

But I also just wanted everyone to have a sample of our engagement photos!!

They aren't necessary. We are doing them because we have a lot of out state guests coming and need to make travel arrangements. We have engagement pictures this weekend and once we get those back I already have them designed so just need to put the pictures in them.

We still took engagement photos but didn't send out Save the Dates!

We did them as our wedding was out of town for most guests, and at the end of the summer which is a time I know a lot of people schedule trips. That said— we didn’t do photos for them! We didn’t feel that that part was necessary for us hah (though I do think engagement photos can be useful as a nice way to get comfortable with your photographer)

I think save the dates are a great idea! I think they are very helpful if you have an "A" and "B" guest list. Our venue can fit 165 but there are other family members we wish we could invite. We are hoping by sending out save the dates if guests already know they aren't available that date we can start adding "B" list guests onto our invite list (hope what I wrote makes sense LOL)

I think the fewer pictures of yourself you send people and the less "cute" any aspect of your wedding, the more polite and appropriate it will all be.

I've received a STD for just about every wedding I've been to and I sent them for mine as well, even though it is local and we only invited a few family members. For us, we are having a weekday wedding so people needed to give notice to work/school/baby sitters ASAP. We sent out an email STD with no photo of us, just a calendar with a heart around the date. I agree with your husband that a photo session and printed STDs are not necessary, but some type of notice to help people with their plans is very appreciated. Even from a financial aspect, a guest needs notice to make sure it's in the budget that month for them to attend your wedding. When we go to weddings my fiance gets a haircut, I get a mani, our suits/dress dry cleaned, $$ for shower gift, $$ for wedding gift, transportation or lodging for wedding, ect. It's just nice to have a heads up in my opinion. Even it it is local :-)

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I am ready for this romantic couples photo STD trend to die off as well :-) I would rather run head first into an electric fence than send a mushy photo of us to our friends and family haha.

I think it's vain to send a picture of yourself unless someone has asked for one.

We skipped them. I've received STD's fro. other weddings & really thought it was unnecessary. Threw it away later. I did a wedding website instead & sent the link to everyone