When to send invites for out of country guests?

Following! I have family in England and Ireland I will be inviting and have wondered about this too

That's a great question! I was planning to mail to UK 2 weeks before the rest of domestic invites go out. I only mail to UK during christimas time and it usually takes 2-3 weeks. I'm not sure about Canada though.

We intend to send all of our invites out 10 weeks in advance since all of our guests will have to travel and several are international. We sent out save the dates 9 months in advance

I would adjust accordingly but I'm not sure of the proper etiquette for this.

We sent our international guests an STD 11 months out and all the invites went out together.

For my family in Ireland/Australia, sending the invitation is more of a formality than an actual invitation. They already know the date and location, and as soon as we have a hotel block they'll book their rooms.

Keep in mind that if you're sending anything around Christmas and New Years up to Canada, you will be dealing with three statutory holidays which there's no mail service in or out. We also don't have mail service on Saturdays which I think some places in the States do.

Jessie JV thanks for the heads up. We will be sending around the holidays since the wedding is late January. Might just ignore etiquette since I can't find anything on this and send them out like November 1st (11 weeks in advance) and request all RSVPs back a week earlier than normal to balance out the Canadians. Unless anybody has any other info?!

@Kris also keep in mind the extra delay in getting them back from from the international guests!

Keep in mind that November 11th is a Federal holiday and there's no mail service in certain parts of the country.

@JessieJV good point, if we send 11/1 I think it should be there before the holiday! I sent my cousin and sister gifts to ask them to be my BMs and it took a week

I sent my invites about 3 months before the wedding because 75% of the guest list was OOT.

I don't know if that's what is supposed to be done, but I thought it was fair.

I had one guest in Newfoundland, and I think it typically took about 2 or 3 weeks for him to get my mail.

@KittyPrawn did you make the respond date earlier for that guest or just assume you would get it back more last minute?

I have two friends abroad and we sent them a week early

One of his cousins lived abroad and sweetly requested we just send it care of his parents to save postage

Assuming you don't have a quick rsvp deadline even with lag time they should get there in time but remember the rsvps may also take longer to get back

Been wondering about this as I have an invite going to Singapore... Hoping if I just do them all a month earlier that works for all the OOT guests.

I also have family in Canada. I'll be sending the invitations earlier for them compared to the American invitees. For my family in France, my mom said it could take an extra month so I'll be sending invites to them in July for my November nuptials. As far as RSVPs, my invitation insert card with the details will say to call, text or message me on Whatsapp to avoid people mailing in their RSVPs. We're not going to include RSVP cards simply because i think it'll be faster for people to let us know via more modern means, especially those outside the States.

@Bride - I talked to a lot of my further guests and let them know my real deadline for venue headcount.

So, I didn't change the date on the rsvp card, but I told them I just really needed to know by May 15 (which was still technically 15 days before final) I also told them they could message a response to me or rsvp online.

Also following! Our wedding is local for us but at least a 9 hour drive for everyone else. We're also inviting friends from England and Germany. I'm thinking about only sending invites as a formality and we'll talk on the phone about details.

We are in a similar situation with a lot of out of town family and friends. We sent save the dates about 9 months in advance. This was maybe unnecessary as bridal party and family knew the date and location almost one year out, but we wanted a save the date anyway. Our invitations just went out for our September wedding. I intended to send only the international ones and hold the others, but they were ready and I didn't want to make two trips to the post office. We are doing online RSVPs as everyone but the grandmas are tech savvy, and we know they will be coming.

We sent all of ours, including the guests from around the world, 11 weeks in advance. Almost everyone is OOT with crazy schedules, so we thought that was okay. We also figured that timing would give everyone enough time regardless of how long it took the postal service to deliver the invites. I'm actually not sure if they've arrived in Australia, Palestine, and Lebanon yet, but I know they made it to England and Switzerland. We sent STDs 7 months in advance.

We had international guests on our list and we still sent our invites out 8 weeks in advance. We had no issue getting the rsvps back on time.