Sending Invitations & rsvp timeline

Did you send out STD's so your guests have your wedding date on their calendar? If so you don't need to send invitations out in March for a September wedding. A lot of people probably won't know 5 months in advance if they can commit to coming/get off work, etc. You're leaving a lot of time between RSVP deadline and the actual date which means people's circumstances can change and you could get a lot of no shows.

Save the dates are that time frame. We’re sending invites quite early because we are over our original budgeted count by a LOT. We need to know how much more money and table decor etc we need to get.
our wedding is June 22, we plan to have invites out end of March for out of state people and beginningish of April for everyone else. Rsvp dates are in three tiers each a week apart . Out of state people rsvp first as I’m pretty sure they will know by May 11if they can fly across the country etc.
Further folks and people who we think may say no are the next week, and the core people the 3rd week of May.
We both have B lists as well so if we do come in under we can send those folks invites too.
We sent STDs in december as soon as we announced and set the date for everyone to have a chance to prepare.

Don’t send invites that early - send save the dates instead (to the out of towners at least). People don’t know what they’re doing that far ahead of time.

My wedding is in Sepember as well. I am sending my invites out next month due to so many out of towners. I have set my deadline for the last day in July. Many people will say that's too early but you have to do what works for you.

I invited a lot of out of town people as well and it is next to impossible to get people to commit that early. You probably won’t get any better info than if you waited a little while then gave them a shorter window to rsvp. All of this assuming you sent them a save the date already. I am 5 days from my wedding and My head count is still changing by one or two every couple of days....things happen, you need to roll with it as much as possible

We sent our invites out 14 weeks early for our destination wedding and I think that was too early.
People will probably not respond 6 months out. Ours have been out for 4 weeks now and we only have 1/3 of the guests responses.

Thank you ladies for the help! I really was wanting to save the money on sending save the dates, but I am going to consider doing that instead. Has anyone put "Adult Only Reception" on their save the dates? Many of the out of town people have children and we just dont have the space or budget for children in our guest list. It's a very small venue.

They told us 6 weeks before for invitations..
we are getting married in August 2019 and we are sending out invites out in June.. because my sister had a bad time about 3 yrs ago she sent her invites out 7 months before her wedding and so many people said they were coming and the day of about 40 people showed up out of 250 awwww wasn’t a fun day.. knowing she sent out invitations and no one showed up.. later on the guests told her that they forget awwww.. then my sissy realized she sent the invitations out to early aww!! I felt so bad for her, but ended up being a wonderful day after all for her...

That is pretty early. Did you send save the dates? Usually those go out 5-12 months in advance, then invites go out 2-3 months in advance. Our RSVP date is 40 days prior.

My wedding is May 4th, we sent invites early February and our RSVP is March 10. More than half our guests are from out of town, so we figured 8 weeks before the wedding was a reasonable amount of time. We have an extra 15 RSVP cards with a date in April (April 12) for the additional guests that we’ll send invites to once the March RSVP date passes... I guess what I’m saying is, you can have 2 different RSVP dates and send them on the first “batch”, and then the additional people get a date further along.

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I sent my Save the Date cards 4 months in advance. I got them from Walgreens and got 50 for like $40 and they were ready same day. I'd go that route instead of sending invites that early. Also, I didn't send Save the Date cards to EVERY person I planned to invite.

I know it is a "No No" and I'm sure I'll get crap for it, but I put "Adult Only Reception" on our invitations. We were afraid that if we did not make it clear then more than half the guests would end up being kids and I'd have to really alter the guest list to accommodate everyone.

View Quoted Comment Thank you Kristen! The problem is, I can not accommodate any extra (including children). So I will have to put "Adult Reception Only" if I do decide to send save the dates.