save the dates, multi-insert invitations, RSVP cards....are all of these necessary?

hipannie

hi everyone, i just received an inviattion to my friends wedding in feb 2013. it is destination wedding. the invitation was a card printed back and forth and simply stated that i was invited to the wedding of her and her fiance on this date at this resort. detailed information is provided on the wedding website that they made (they used The Knot's template and it looks amazing) including a section to RSVP online.

i spoke to her about the invite and she informed me that it cost less than $65 for 50 invites, postage and cute envelops stickers. i love the idea but i don't know if people still prefer the traditional invitation.

 i just wanted to get your ideas on this more eco-friendly method compared to the traditional invitation. my wedding is in sept 2013. if i sent the invites out 6 months in advance with the link to the wedding website, i could get away with not giving a save-the-date and my guests could always go on the website for more info and to RSVP.

i believe all of my guests are computer savvy and if not at least know their way around a computer or someone who has one.

is this a tacky way of inviting guests to my wedding? with 70 invitations to send, i cannot afford to spend a lot of money on paper and postage that will end up in many of my guest's recycling bins after the wedding. as well, apart from my friend's wedding, i have not received an invite like this and i think it's pretty unique

LILIPAD27

Send an e-STD message of some sort with a link to your wedding website if you make one. Then send the actual paper invitation when you are ready to mail them out.

petite+engineer

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_canada-toronto_save-the-dates-multi-paper-invitations-rsvp-cardsare-all-of-this-necessary?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local%20Wedding%20BoardsForum:613Discussion:0b085774-0a47-4a66-9c87-2aefc00782baPost:0d51c431-7de2-4124-b42a-999cf17f4589">save the dates, multi-insert invitations, RSVP cards....are all of these necessary?</a>:
[QUOTE]hi everyone, i just received an inviattion to my friends wedding in feb 2013. it is destination wedding. the invitation was a card printed back and forth and simply stated that i was invited to the wedding of her and her fiance on this date at this resort. detailed information is provided on the wedding website that they made (they used The Knot's template and it looks amazing) including a section to RSVP online. i spoke to her about the invite and she informed me that it cost less than $65 for 50 invites, postage and cute envelops stickers. i love the idea but i don't know if people still prefer the traditional invitation.  i just wanted to get your ideas on this more eco-friendly method compared to the traditional invitation. my wedding is in sept 2013. if i sent the invites out 6 months in advance with the link to the wedding website, i could get away with not giving a save-the-date and my guests could always go on the website for more info and to RSVP. i believe all of my guests are computer savvy and if not at least know their way around a computer or someone who has one. is this a tacky way of inviting guests to my wedding? with 70 invitations to send, i cannot afford to spend a lot of money on paper and postage that will end up in many of my guest's recycling bins after the wedding. as well, apart from my friend's wedding, i have not received an invite like this and i think it's pretty unique
Posted by hipannie[/QUOTE]<div>
</div><div>Do not send out your invites six months in advance unless it is a destination wedding. You'll just end up with a bunch of people forgetting to RSVP. I sent out mine six weeks in advance and still ended up chasing people down. Also, as a guest, I can't plan that far in advance. And I'd probably lose the invite in the meantime if your RSVP date is closer to the wedding. I've already lost one that went out three months in advance, and had to ask the bride for our code for the web site.</div><div>
</div><div>I see a STD as a way to help out-of-town guests book time off and book their flights/accomodations. We did ours by email. If I did it again, I would put it as an attachment or in the body of the email. Our email read "For more information, go to this address: <a href="http://www.ourweddingsite.com"> and we still got tons of phone calls saying that they didn't receive the attachment (there was no attachment!). Honestly, most guests never visited the web site (or even read the email in full).</a></div><div>
</div><div>We did online RSVP, which saved money, but was also a headache. You may think that Uncle Joe is tech savvy because he replies to your emails, but he just couldn't figure out that he had to click on the "RSVP" button. I'd recommend doing it online, but be ready to make phone calls.</div><div>
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LILIPAD27

^Definitely consider what she says if you are having a lot of people coming.  I am only having 80 people so that really means less than 40 people have to actually reply to the invitation. 35 of them are under the age of 40 and are tech savy or have already registered for the website.  so that leaves me with unles 5 people are older than 50 and that includes, my parents his parents and a few of their friend. 

nbr14

We did an email save the date and put it in the body of the email. We bought invites from Michael's and printed them ourselves at home - all in, it probably cost around $80-100 for the 120 guests we invited (60 invites I believe). For RSVP, we created an email account for people to rsvp to and also included a phone number that people could choose to call as well, thus accounting for the grandma's and Uncle Joe's who may not like the electronic reply.

Jewel224

I send out postcard STDs because about 60% of our guests are all OOT - got them on Vistaprint when they had a promotion for 100 postcards for free, you just had to pay the shipping which cost me about $10. 

But we will send paper invites with the option to RSVP through our wed-site or a telephone number to call.  I do have a few family that are still super traditional so for the 5 of them, I will send an RSVP postcard to mail out to me. 

But I do agree that 6 months in advance is too early, unless you're having a lot of OOTs or doing a destination wedding.  Do an e-STD if you want to be more eco-friendly, otherwise, mail out the invites about 8 weeks in advance.  There is a wed-site that sends out e-invitations that look just like receiving a invite that slides out of the envelope.  Totally love that idea too, but I still have quite the few traditionalists in family and friends so I know it wouldn't fly. 

mashavoo

do whats best for you and your budget..i did save the date magnets because most of our guest are out of town...our invites were handkerchiefs....no frills..just a reply card..all other info is on the website...we saved money on ordering extra wasted paer for invites which people through away

Patgd

My fiance and I are doing the e-STD cards from our wedding website on here.  With a couple of exceptions, everyone on our guest list has a computer and an email address and those that don't will receive a note with the date on it.  My fiance and I have created our wedding invitations and we'll have them printed at Staples/UPS Store/something along these lines which has turned out to be much more reasonably priced anyway.  The deciding factor on us going this way was trying to find an invitation that fit our wine and cigars theme.  You can find those two elements individually but we found nothing that combined the two themes together.  I know that Staples is very reasonably priced but I still have to price out the UPS Store to see if they can give me a better price.