When's too early to send out wedding invitations?

Knottie84374339

Hi everyone! We're inviting people from all around the world to come to Chicago to celebrate with us next August. Less than 10% of those invited are actually from Chicago - the rest is from everywhere else in the world. Our friends and family from across the ocean are trying to plan, and are asking for invitations. The invitations are ordered, designed and ready (they're online) but I don't want to send them out too early because I don't want those not traveling as far to feel pressured.  

My main question is: What would be considered too early, and what would be okay? I want to get them out sooner rather than later so I can plan before and after parties and events. Many of the guests want to stay in Chicago before and after but need more details, which I'd be able to give them once I knew who's coming and for how long. 

Any feedback, opinions, advice would be much appreciated!!

Jells2dot0

Invites should be sent out around 8 weeks before your wedding. If you send out an invite too soon, people may forget about the event or their plans may change. I recommend sending out save the dates and having a wedding website. You can keep the wedding website up to date with various events you are planning, hotel ideas for Chicago, and other things do to when in town. People can book at their own pace and when the invites finally go out, they can RSVP yes if they are already booked. 

Also, remember that your invites should match the formality of your event. This will help people pack appropriately. 

Viczaesar

Knottie84374339 said:

Hi everyone! We're inviting people from all around the world to come to Chicago to celebrate with us next August. Less than 10% of those invited are actually from Chicago - the rest is from everywhere else in the world. Our friends and family from across the ocean are trying to plan, and are asking for invitations. The invitations are ordered, designed and ready (they're online) but I don't want to send them out too early because I don't want those not traveling as far to feel pressured.  

My main question is: What would be considered too early, and what would be okay? I want to get them out sooner rather than later so I can plan before and after parties and events. Many of the guests want to stay in Chicago before and after but need more details, which I'd be able to give them once I knew who's coming and for how long. 

Any feedback, opinions, advice would be much appreciated!!

Invites are supposed to be sent 6-8 weeks before the wedding.  I would say you can push that to 10 weeks even, but you should not send wedding invitations out earlier than 10 weeks before your wedding.  The RSVP date should be a couple of weeks before the wedding, or a week before the caterer needs final numbers (which should be within the month of the wedding; if they ask for earlier, push back).  Do not ask your guests to RSVP that they're coming months in advance of your wedding.

What you can do to get them the information about where and when your wedding will be is send Save the Dates (STDs).  Just keep in mind that every person who receives an STD must also receive a wedding invitation, even if your budget changes or they tell you they won't be able to make it after receiving the STD.

MobKaz

Knottie84374339 said:

Hi everyone! We're inviting people from all around the world to come to Chicago to celebrate with us next August. Less than 10% of those invited are actually from Chicago - the rest is from everywhere else in the world. Our friends and family from across the ocean are trying to plan, and are asking for invitations. The invitations are ordered, designed and ready (they're online) but I don't want to send them out too early because I don't want those not traveling as far to feel pressured.  

My main question is: What would be considered too early, and what would be okay? I want to get them out sooner rather than later so I can plan before and after parties and events. Many of the guests want to stay in Chicago before and after but need more details, which I'd be able to give them once I knew who's coming and for how long. 

Any feedback, opinions, advice would be much appreciated!!

You may also want to consider making hotel blocks as early as possible.  August in Chicago has at least two mega weekends, and sometimes a third.  Lolla is usually the first weekend of August, and the Air and Water Show is typically the week of the 13th.  The Arlington Million often runs the same weekend as the Air and Water show as well.  Reserving hotel blocks should not result in you incurring any charges, so the sooner you can make an educated guess as to the number of rooms necessary, the better.

WinstonsGirl

Usually 6-8 weeks, but with the international mail, I'd say 10 as well.  We sent ours about 10 weeks out and everyone in Chile just e-mailed us an RSVP as they probably wouldn't have made it back before the wedding.  However, the invites to England did and we received mailed RSVP's.  Try and give your international guests different ways of RSVP'ing - mail, e-mail, phone, etc. just in case the mail is slow.  Most people can figure that out on their end though

ShesSoCold

I agree with PPs. Eight weeks is typical for wedding invitations, but I believe you can stretch that to 10 if there are a lot of out of town guests. 

Definitely send save the dates out with hotel info. If you haven't made a wedding website, that's a great way to get info to your guests. 

lembaslover

We knew most of our guests were traveling to our wedding so we sent save the dates out about 11 months before the wedding. Then we sent invites out 8 weeks before the wedding. For the most part people didn't make any solid plans until the invites went out. Having everything on a website is nice but you'll probably still get people asking you for hotels and airport info... I try to just direct them back to website (assuming they are people with access, for our grandparents our parents stepped in and helped them with reservations and such).