When to send invites around the holidays??

It's an unpopular opinion on here but.. I already sent mine out yesterday. My wedding is March 12th and most of the vendors are requesting numbers 30 days before. This coupled with it being a destination wedding my wedding planner advised we get them out asap so people can make arrangements.

If you are doing online RSVPs, I would probably send the invitations the week after Christmas - this way, even if the mail is running slow, everyone should receive them at least 2-3 weeks before the deadline to RSVP. If you are including an RSVP card for them to mail back, I would probably send out the invites now, just to leave extra time for the RSVP cards to make it back.

I would recommend pushing back you RSVP date to 3 weeks before your wedding. Not many people will know 5 weeks in advanced if they can come and you won’t get many responses.
My florist is also requiring final numbers 30 days in advanced and I was concerned but we decided we’re going to go with the max and if we have extra florals we can find somewhere else to put them.

Regardless, I would send invites at the New year. If you send them too soon most people will probably forget it in the holiday chaos.

View Quoted Comment If it was just florals, I’d push it back and swallow the costs, but it’s our venue as well. Final headcount, along with entree selections. We anticipate having to track people down for responses and meal selections which is why we decided on the 22nd to give ourselves a few days to do the leg work.

View Quoted Comment Personally as a guest, I’d 100% appreciate the early invite for a destination wedding!

I'd double check with your venue/caterer about their final due date - mine required an initial headcount 3 weeks before but we had another few days to a week after then to give them the final number - they also asked how many outstanding RSVPs we had so they had a general idea of how much to prepare for.

I'd wait to send invites until mid to late December (8-10 weeks before) if most guests are local (mail delivery should still be pretty fast if it's only traveling a few towns over, and guests won't have to plan to travel, book a hotel, etc.), but send soon (12 weeks before) if they're farther away.

Wedding is 3/19 and I will be sending mine out 12/20. The mail runs EXTRA slow and I don't want to risk it.

My wedding is 01/27/22 and we mailed invites the end of September. I say go for it and just mail them now. Our RSVP date 12/10/21, because I wanted the responses before Christmas. We still have about 50 responses needed. The text reminders help.

View Quoted Comment Ahhh I see, I only saw florist. Most venues don’t need them until 2-3 weeks before so that’s strange.

I wouldn't wait until Christmas because mail has been slow all around, even for such things like holiday deliveries! Also, some people have things planned out a few months from now too - my boyfriend and I are debating when we'd like to visit family out in the Midwest or go visit friends in Texas.

About the latter, one of his best friends from high school got engaged and are getting married in 2022 and it'd be the first time I'm meeting them! That's supposedly something we'd do in February and we were already talking about it. So - in other words: send 'em out, and it's better to be safe than sorry!

I would send mine early. I am actually planning on sending my invites earlier than recommended due to family and friends having jobs that require them to work weekends and difficult to get them off without advanced notice, I also have an uncle and aunt in Africa, I doubt they will come but would like to give them time to plan just in case.

April 9 here: We are sending ours out at the end of December w/ a February 19th deadline. The notion that people won’t be able to RSVP that far in advance is completely bizarre to me. Most of our guests run their lives by a calendar & receiving an invitation only 8 wks in advance would be a problem for them. We gave notice of the date months ago to a few of our busier guests so that they could block out the date. You may have a few flaky people that can’t commit so early on and, of course, unavoidable circumstances occur for everyone that may prevent them from honoring their RSVP (which could happen as late as the day of!). If I were you, I’d send them out now before the Xmas mail rush. And definitely follow up immediately if you haven’t received your RSVPs by the due date. Mail has been terrible even w/o the holiday rush & the chance that someone won’t receive their invite is very high.

Send them now. People get very busy and forgetful in the next few weeks and the post office will be swamped.

View Quoted Comment I kinda felt and thought the same thing.. the chances of me being able to attend events increases with the more notice we have. Our calendar fills up quickly. Obviously not everyone is the same as us, so I didn’t want to just assume everyone would be similar to me lol a lot of responses, this one in particular make me feel a little better about sending them out sooner rather than later

View Quoted Comment May have worded it a bit more strongly than I had intended though lol. I think the 8 wk “rule” in sending invitations is outdated & not actually based in real logic, so I think I wanted to get my point across 😂. Of course not everyone will be the same (& that does not mean they are flaky 😬), but I think you have those people covered with your follow up communications. And the flaky ones are reliably unreliable, so you run the risk of them being no-shows anyway! I have zero concerns about sending mine out so early & would send them out sooner if we were ready.

I actually have the same wedding date as you & decided to set my RSVP deadline as 1/29/22. I placed mine in the mailbox yesterday! I wanted to get them sent out before the Christmas craziness & rush, especially because a lot of things in the various mail services have been getting lost or delayed. Plus, if we see certain people haven't RSVPed as the end of January nears, we can shoot them a quick reminder message. Hope that helps!

View Quoted Comment Very helpful!! Thank you!

I am getting married 1/29/2022 and sent mine out earlier than I probably should have, but like many others have said I didn't want mine to be delayed due to Christmas mail. Also I have to have my final counts two weeks out and I gave the RSVP deadline a week before that, so if I need to track people down I could. Some have taken a while to get out because we were in the middle of a mayoral run-off in Atlanta, so I think political mail got a higher priority than my invites. Good luck!

View Quoted Comment Hi date twin! I’ve been debating whether to send after Christmas or 1/1. Glad I won’t be the only one sending early.

At the end of the day, when you send out your invitations is ultimately up to you, since there are no set rules on when they should be sent out, however, according to this wedding stationery timeline, you should mail your wedding invitations out 6-8 weeks before your wedding date: https://www.magnetstreet.com/wedding-stationery-timeline

Since your wedding is on February 26th, you should send them out no later than January 15th, which would be 6 weeks before your wedding date. With this being said though, if you feel like you want to send out invitations ASAP because of the holidays, that’s okay too. Sending them out early is far better than sending them out late.