Should We Skip Save The Dates?

Personally I think that unless you're doing a destination wedding and need guests to know basic details to save up, save the dates are a waste of money imho. If you're worried, send out invitations with plenty of notice. Our wedding is December so my invites are going out August/September for a November RSVP date.

I would skip them. Honestly, they're a relatively new trend anyway and totally optional.

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Yea our venue also requires the final headcount 30 days prior so thinking about that now, I guess it really wouldn't make sense to send out save the dates. We'd have to send our invites out about mid May/early June. I completely forgot about their RSVP deadline

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Absolutely. We did it the first time but also had more time to get it done. I'm not sure if our family from out of the country will even be traveling due to covid but doesn't seem like we'll actually have much time anyway after really looking into it.

Save the dates have been around forever. Cards/magnets are the new trend that started 5 years ago. For decades prior to that, couples or their parents would announce the date to invited guests over the phone by word of mouth roughly 6 months ahead to give them time to prepare if the need to make travel arrangements before the invites go out at 6-8 weeks.

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Something else to be mindful of is that not all guests will RSVP on time. I am deliberately asking guests to RSVP at least 5-6 weeks before the wedding. It takes time to organise stationery, determine seating charts etc etc and I've never had every single person RSVP to something before so I am consciously leaving myself time to chase people up before we need to finalise all things numbers with vendors.

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Very true. Especially my family so I'll definitely keep an eye out for that. Thank you.

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Yea we're about 5 months out or so. Just wouldn't be enough time to actually send anything but I can definitely contact them directly.

Hi maybe an invite/stationary item Save the Date isn’t necessary, but I would still contact people via call, text, email or whatever (maybe an e-vite) and still give a heads up about your date! 2021 is booked and busy with postponed weddings and events from 2020 so I would still give some sort of notice so people know about your special day!

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Most definitely! We've been through it for sure so we get it. We'll most likely reach out by phone. Not everyone has email and we'd rather not deal with asking for everyone's at this point.

Thank you Chantelle!

I would skip them, it's only 5 months away. We moved our wedding to October and we just posted the Save the Date on social media instead of sending new ones out

I would skip them, especially if you're planning to send out your invites in a couple months. You could always contact your guests by phone and/or rely on word-of-mouth to share your new date with them.

If you don’t feel the need to send it out then I would skip it. My fiancé and I booked our venue in January of this year and we are getting married April 17th 2021. Because our wedding was literally 90 days away we skipped the save the dates and sort of just did a save the dates and invitations all in one. RSVP was by call or text because we just didn’t have time to do paper rsvp. Leading up to our invitations being sent out we called and text family and friends that we were inviting them and to be on the look out for invitations. Hope that helps! Your wedding date is further than 3 months out lol so you have time but honestly if you didn’t send it you could save that $100+ towards something else!

View Quoted Comment Yea, thinking on it now does seem a bit of a waste. We're thinking of just reaching out to everyone individually.

View Quoted Comment Makes a lot more sense that way. Thank you.

View Quoted Comment Very true! We didn't even realize at first that we have a 30 day prior deadline for final headcount so yea, definitely wouldn't make any sense to send save the dates.


Thanks

First go round (pre-Covid) we did virtual Save the Dates. It saved us money, was eco-friendly, and ensured we could reach everyone in a timely manner. We did send physical STDs to family (some older family members do not have email/internet access). Having everyone's email addresses ended up proving really handy when Covid hit and we needed to rapidly change plans as well.

This time around I think we might just skip STDs because we honestly don't feel confident in how Covid will play out and feel like its impossible to predict what anything will look like six months in advance. STDs are most important if people need to travel and make travel arrangements, but who is really buying plane tickets and hotel rooms 6 months out right now? I think we will likely skip STDs and just sent out invites 6-12 weeks ahead of time. We will let VIPs know the date earlier and mention it to guests as we talk to them, but any sort of "official" notice likely will wait.

We skipped them for our 4.24.2021 wedding, though that was partially because of when we had our engagement shoot. We knew we'd want those pictures on STDs and invites, but weren't able to do the shoot until 2.7.2021 and then got the pictures back about 2 weeks later. At that point we were about 9 weeks out from the wedding and once we ordered the invites we were about 8 weeks out. Timing didn't work out for us, so we may have sent them out if it did. However, most of our guests are in the state with a max of 3hrs driving time to get to us, so we also may have just skipped them to save the money anyway.

View Quoted Comment Gotcha. We'll probably skip email but still contact directly. Thanks

View Quoted Comment Makes total sense. Guess it would be best for us to skip. Especially not knowing if everyone will get them in a timely manner anyway due to covid.