Snarky Brides

Why do people do invites so gd early?

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Re: Why do people do invites so gd early?

  • I was always told 6-8 weeks was average and anything before 8 is too early.


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  • I guess I'd hope for the best and assume people aren't B-listing. If you assume the worst about people all the time life is pretty sad.
    I know some people just like to get responses super early. My big issue with that is I never know my work schedule five weeks in advance. So it's more of an irritant than anything. 

    Also, even though they may not be B-listing, like in your case, it always appears that way to me simply because 6-8 weeks out is really early.
    This a million times.     OOT or not, we rarely know if we can attend a wedding until under a month out.  It's just reality.  We also make last minutes travel plans.  So it's really annoying for those of us who can't reply accurately so far out.  

    One time we were invited to a wedding with an RSVP date 2 months out.  We actually said yes by the RSVP date.  It was OOT.    2 weeks after the RSVP date (6 weeks before the wedding)  DH lost his job.  At 4 weeks out we decided we really could not go OOT.   Lost $300+ in airline tickets.   Bride (we didn't know her) was not happy we changed our minds.    Whatever, life happens, had she had a normal RSVP date she would not have had this problem.






    What differentiates an average host and a great host is anticipating unexpressed needs and wants of their guests.  Just because the want/need is not expressed, doesn't mean it wouldn't be appreciated. 
  • Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how sending invitations 3 or 4 months out is a crime. I get that if they're B-listing, then yeah, that's tacky as hell. But I bet most people are acting on the assumption that more notice = better. Yeah, I know "that's what save the dates are for!" But I often here on here that STDs aren't even necessary unless you're having a lot of OOT guests or a DW. So, why not? I'm not saying they should go out a year before; that's silly. But saying that anything more than 8 weeks is unacceptable is a little insane IMO. Assuming the RSVP date is still close enough to the wedding to be reasonable, and assuming you're willing to be flexible with the people who don't know their work schedules until two or three weeks out (or less), what's the harm?
    Right. Exactly. That's why the RSVP date is the real clue. 

    If the RSVP date is 2-3 weeks before the wedding, then it's just advanced notice and no biggie. 

    If the RSVP date is, say, 6-8 weeks before the wedding, though, that's when I know people are B-listing.
    Maybe I'm being a special snowflake and hoping it doesn't count for me. My RSVP date is 5 weeks out and I am definitely not B-listing. I'm just the kind of person who overestimates the time it takes to get somewhere for an appointment and shows up 45 minutes early, and that habit ended up on my RSVPs. By the time I realized that's considered too early, I had them printed already. Oh well. There will always be people who don't RSVP on time whether it's 5 weeks before or 2 weeks before.

    I guess I'd hope for the best and assume people aren't B-listing. If you assume the worst about people all the time life is pretty sad.
    Same here. So sue me. My family is notoriously late for every absolutely everything, so I wanted to give extra time knowing they'd be late no matter what date the card said. If anyone really doesn't know by that date whether they can come or not, I'll give them some leeway... but we also have very, very few guests who work irregular schedules. Definitely no b-listing going on here. And I've gotten tons of invites with early RSVP deadlines which I know weren't b-listing either. I truly don't think you can jump to that conclusion based on an RSVP date, especially when so many resources just say "make the RSVP date halfway between when invites are sent and the event date." 

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  • I guess I'd hope for the best and assume people aren't B-listing. If you assume the worst about people all the time life is pretty sad.
    I know some people just like to get responses super early. My big issue with that is I never know my work schedule five weeks in advance. So it's more of an irritant than anything.
    Can I ask what you do? I'd assume for most non-hourly jobs the more notice the better for getting vacation time, and even for hourly ones you could make sure you have someone who could cover your shift if you get assigned to work that day. I'm not judging you; I just want to know what I'm not understanding here. Lots of business trips or something?
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  • wrigleyvillewrigleyville member
    First Anniversary First Comment 5 Love Its First Answer
    edited May 2014
    I'm a psychiatrist, and I work in a clinic with several other psychiatrists. Our office assigns people emergency "on call" shifts on weekends. For some reason, each month's schedule often isn't released until 3-4 weeks in advance.

    If I get scheduled for a Saturday or Sunday, I can ask someone to trade weekends with me, but there's no guarantee they will. Plus, sometimes people don't know if they can take your weekend until that same week, which means I wouldn't know if I could go to the wedding until that week.

    It's a giant pain in the ass, and we've all complained about it. There's no reason why they can't get us the weekend schedules earlier, considering we have to put in for time off 6-8 MONTHS in advance.

    Basically, if I don't have an STD in hand by the time our vacation requests are due, I have to wait until the schedule comes out and then either hope I'm not scheduled or that someone can trade with me by the time the RSVP is due.

    It's a huge cluster, and I'm currently applying to other clinics/hospitals.

  • Bottom line: I'm sorry if I come off as judgey, but it just doesn't make sense to have an RSVP deadline so far in advance of the caterer's deadline. As a guest, it would be rude for me to assume I have "leeway" and that I can just send it in after the date. When I see an RSVP date, that IS the date it's due, and if I won't know if I can make it by then, I decline.

    To me, it's like starting a ceremony late to accommodate the rude people who can't show up on time. By shoving the date up a few weeks, you might be causing some guests to decline even though they may have been able to make it had they been given more time to plan. A polite guest isn't going to call and ask if they can RSVP "late".

    So, yes, in my personal experience, when the RSVP date is 6-ish weeks or more before the wedding, it's because the couple is B-listing. I've seen family and friends do this a million times, and I've been on that B-list before.
  • I'm planning to send mine out about 2 months before, but that's because the majority of the guests are OOT and over half of the guests (the majority of my family) are in another country. It would take about 2 weeks for them to get the invitations and 2 weeks for me to get the RSVPs through post. They'd also need time to make arrangements and stuff if they want to show up. If they lived closer, I would definitely not send the invitations out so early, though.

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  • I guess I'd hope for the best and assume people aren't B-listing. If you assume the worst about people all the time life is pretty sad.
    I know some people just like to get responses super early. My big issue with that is I never know my work schedule five weeks in advance. So it's more of an irritant than anything.
    Can I ask what you do? I'd assume for most non-hourly jobs the more notice the better for getting vacation time, and even for hourly ones you could make sure you have someone who could cover your shift if you get assigned to work that day. I'm not judging you; I just want to know what I'm not understanding here. Lots of business trips or something?
    You didn't ask me, but I will answer.  DH and I both work in the hospitality industry.  DH is a salaried exec chef.    You might be surprised how business levels change in a month time.    We could be completely dead 6 weeks out.  Then they run a special or book a last minute event and all the sudden we are oversold with 300 person banquet.  Happens ALL. THE. TIME.   Being the chef he is expected to be there.   

    My schedule is more flexible now, but in the past we got our schedule on Tuesday for a Friday start.   They rarely guaranteed time off until a few weeks out so they could see how business levels were.  If all the sudden the hotel was fully booked it could be a no.






    What differentiates an average host and a great host is anticipating unexpressed needs and wants of their guests.  Just because the want/need is not expressed, doesn't mean it wouldn't be appreciated. 
  • We're sending ours out approximately 12 weeks in advance with an 8 week RSVP deadline. But it's a DW and no one we know is planning international travel on a whim, either they're coming or they're not, and they'll certainly know two months prior. There are a lot of things we cannot arrange until we know how many guests we are expecting, so we're doing what makes sense for our particular situation. I wouldn't be offended if I received an invite super early, even if I had to decline instead of dropping out last minute because I wouldn't know what our schedules looked like. Nor would I assume someone was B-listing me if the invite was close to the date of the wedding. I would just default to the fact that most of my friends are flaky and/or not consulting Ms. Manners before dropping their invites in the mail.
  • I work in retail and my schedule is set six weeks out. As long as your RSVP deadline isn't more than 6 weeks out, I don't really mind. However, when FI and I got an invite in mid February with a mid March deadline for a late June wedding I was annoyed. 

    This wedding is local for us, so I was hoping not to have to take a vacation day (trying to save those up for our wedding and honeymoon). But in order to ensure I got that Saturday off, that's exactly what I had to do. It's FI's family, and I really want to go, but it put me in an awkward position. What if we had already booked our honeymoon and I had scheduled all my time off? I would have had to decline even though I might still be able to make it simply because the RSVP date was so early.
  • I sent ours 8 weeks before the wedding. I'm so glad I did too, I had three invitations come back. Two people moved after they told me their addresses, and I wrote one address incorrectly (3113 instead of 3133). I'm glad I had time to call, explain what happened, and resend.
  • To me, it's like starting a ceremony late to accommodate the rude people who can't show up on time. 
    Yeah that's definitely part of what I'm doing (no sarcasm). I was concerned about the ceremony thing as well but my FMIL said "If they can't show up on time, too bad." and I decided to go with her on that one. Guess I should have asked about the RSVP dates for the same reason! Thanks to you and @lyndausvi for explaining your job situations, too. 

    At least in my situation, thankfully, I already had word-of-mouth "yes" or "no" from most of the guests. There're a few out of state people whose answers I don't know, but almost every other guest lives within a 5-30 minute drive of the venue and they all regularly get together for family things on weekends, so I'm not that concerned.
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  • I hate myself for not setting an RSVP date. I didn't know I was supposed to because I didn't know anything going into planning this wedding. Our wedding is very small and informal, but 90% of our VIPs are coming from all over the country, so I sent invitations in March for my October wedding. Yes, it was early, but we also have a handful of Navy people coming who need to plan ahead, as well as family members who need to factor in vacation time so they don't blow it all this summer, and some family members with low incomes who would need to save money for the trip, etc. I didn't want to send STDs and then invites since we're trying to keep this low budget, so I just sent invites with the city, date, and a link to our wedding website. Everything that would go on a STD, but it said "you're invited".  

    Now, I have the task of calling or emailing a group of people a couple months before the wedding to let them know we need an RSVP by a certain date, which will probably be about 3 weeks before the wedding. It's annoying, but it won't be too much trouble to send an email to people who we are unsure of. Considering we only invited 44 guests, it's not hard to keep track of everyone. 

    I honestly don't think it would be weird for people to ask for special consideration on RSVPing if you're close with the couple getting married. If you explain why you might not know until closer to the wedding than the couple has asked you to RSVP, they can let you know 1) okay that's fine, let us know as soon as you can or 2) sorry, we need an answer to confirm headcounts for vendors.

    No harm in asking. If you don't really know the couple, though, I don't think you should ask for special consideration.
  • My mom still thinks an STD is an invitation (which, in a way, it is, but I mean a literal invitation), so she gets really mad and confused when all of the venue information and such isn't on there. I've had to explain it a million times. She keeps asking, "Why don't people just send an invitation? This is a waste of paper and money." Heh. :)

    EVERYBODY on my guest list seems to think this. So do FI and FMIL. FI got very confused as to why I was ordering invitations. I've asked for address/SO updates from singles and people we knew were moving and been told, "Didn't you send us an invite already?" If you mean the STD I sent 5 months ago, sure. But wouldn't you like to know the location and time? (Besides, which, STDs only went to OOT family and very old friends). 

    I'm sitting perfectly at 6 weeks for the batch I just mailed. But dang, if that doesn't feel super late! 6 weeks seems totally behind the 8-ball. 
  • We have ordered our invitations. Ours are a bit fussy, so I will take a little longer to assemble then. Thus, I need extra time.

    Wedding is 10/31/2014. RSVP is 10/17/2014. I'm mailing invites ~ 8/1/2014. No STD cards, but all guests know the date and are local or nearly so. Plus, small wedding. Everyone on the list would love to have our engagement and wedding pictures up or already have engagement pictures up, and we display their pictures. So, it felt pointless to send STD in our case.

    But, this is why I LOVE our printer. Brick and mortar all the way. He knows appropriate time frames and had no problems helping us set best days to order and mail. Otherwise, I'd have used wedding website guidelines which are sent out crazy early. Plus, he gets us. We want a traditional invite that is geeked out. So it's probably cheesy, but we are thrilled with them. Gentleman Owl will escort our RSVP cards home. Seriously geeky, probably side eye worthy. But I have much loves for Sir Owl. I'll take the side eyes. But MIL saw them and went all happy tears on them.
  • krcbkrcb member
    5 Love Its First Comment Name Dropper
    I'm going to a wedding where the RSVP deadline was 8 weeks in advance. I can't remember when the invites came in. I didn't pay attention to the deadline because I knew I could make it, but, dang, now I see why she was so frustrated that people did not RSVP on time - the RSVP date was around the time invites should be going out!
  • I attended a wedding once where the RSVP date was more than 3 months before the wedding date. Right before the wedding actually took place, there were all kinds of issues with possibly not making the venue minimum, people trying to invite extra guests, and people possibly forgetting about the wedding and making other plans for that weekend.
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  • My dilemma is the fact that we have A LOT of out if town guests on our list and we honestly don't know if most if them would come.... Because our families are so large and so distant we don't have a single friend on our guest list.... I don't see how I can eliminate family to put friends on my guest list... But honestly what's wrong with having a b list.... If most out of town guests won't make it shouldn't we be able to invite some of our friends to celebrate with us? I've had multiple people tell me to do a first round of invites early so we have enough time to not invite someone last minute....
  • Jenv1025 said:
    My dilemma is the fact that we have A LOT of out if town guests on our list and we honestly don't know if most if them would come.... Because our families are so large and so distant we don't have a single friend on our guest list.... I don't see how I can eliminate family to put friends on my guest list... But honestly what's wrong with having a b list.... If most out of town guests won't make it shouldn't we be able to invite some of our friends to celebrate with us? I've had multiple people tell me to do a first round of invites early so we have enough time to not invite someone last minute....
    no no no no no. don't make them feel second best by inviting them in a second round. Just budget enough to invite everyone or put on your big girl panties and make decisions.  We have a large family too. We have 150-200 of just family and then our list has now hit 300 with friends. So we budgeted and cut out some things we don't need. We expect about 120, but will be happy with any number and able to host all 300. If we get less than 300 we will start adding extras to the bar, food, limo, etc. 

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  • Bottom line....friends are going to know that we can't cut out our family... People get so worked up about this a list b list nonsense...
  • Jenv1025 said:
    Bottom line....friends are going to know that we can't cut out our family... People get so worked up about this a list b list nonsense...
    Because it is rude. Whether someone is offended or not, it is rude. If they aren't offended then they are being accommodating guests, which is fine. It doesn't mean your hosting is any less rude. 

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  • So you'd rather not get invited at all.... And not be able to share in the celebration than get invited a month later than family?
  • Jenv1025 said:
    So you'd rather not get invited at all.... And not be able to share in the celebration than get invited a month later than family?
    Uh, yeah. Because by doing that, you just told me "hey, I never see my great aunt twice removed, but she's more imoprtant to me than you are."
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  • That's pretty petty.... But whatever
  • FiancBFiancB member
    First Anniversary First Comment 5 Love Its Name Dropper
    edited May 2014
    I just got b-listed hard. My friend's brother happens to be getting married in the same state as me, a month before me, so his family is coming out, including my best friend. I never really got along with the brother all that well so I never assumed I was invited, though I hoped to get a chance to see my friend when she came out. I never did receive an invitation, though my parents did (my family having been friends and neighbors with their family for 25 years). <br><br>   Well, the wedding is on Saturday and two days ago I got a message from my friend where she said "since your parents aren't coming you can totally come to the wedding! But they need to know by tonight!" Well it's still a 4-5 hour drive away, one I've been making 1-2x a week lately and I just don't think I can muster another one in so I said I probably woIuldn't make it. <br><br>   Frankly I would rather have not been invited. I know that the brother doesn't like me that much and there were other people in line for invites ahead of me. But now that they sprung that on me I feel kind of obligated and guilty for not going.
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  • FiancBFiancB member
    First Anniversary First Comment 5 Love Its Name Dropper
    OK TK refuses to do paragraphs, even with my br tags. Sorry for word vom. 
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  • Yes we'll get invited that way especially that close to the event is definitely not something that I plan on doing....but people also have to budget and we have to invite our large families first.... All my friends know we don't have any friends on our list right now since we're maxed out then again a lot of those friends have gone through wedding planning on understand that....
  • Jenv1025 said:
    That's pretty petty.... But whatever
    I disagree, but it might have something to do with my family. Both of my mom's sisters are addicted to drugs and have completely screwed up their kids' lives because of it. They have never been close to me, and we don't particularly like each other. If I invited them because "I have to" instead of inviting friends, that would be a huge snub to my friends.

    On the other hand, FI's family is enormous and they all seem to get along pretty well. On his side, we decided to cut some friends he isn't close to in order to accommodate his whole family.

    But nobody, not one person, is getting an invitation after someone else declines. That's just a really good way to make your friends feel like they are just a number toward your minimum.
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