When to send invites

tracy_k

Hey ladies -- I'm sort of arguing with my mom about when to send out the invitations. Standard planning advice says to send invites 6-8 weeks before the wedding, but does that mean before the actual wedding date or before the date that the final headcount has to be provided to the venue/caterer?Our wedding is Feb. 27, but we have to give the venue our final headcount by Feb. 5. So I'd like the RSVP deadline to be Jan. 20 or 25 (to give the late folks a little leeway, and give me some time to hound any non-responders). Ideally, we'd send out the invites 6 weeks before that, but that puts us right smack up against Christmas, and I don't want the invites to get swept up in high volumes of holiday cards, especially since lots of folks travel. I was leaning toward sending them the first week of December, my mom says that's way too early and I whould send them around Jan. 1.Thoughts?

gottahavashorti

Honestly, I'd be more likely to lose/forget about an invitation that came before all the Christmas/holiday cards than one that arrived shortly after the holidays.  If you sent around Jan 1 or 2, most people should be back from traveling by the time they receive the invitations.A Jan 25 RSVP would still give you almost 2 weeks to wait for RSVPs sent on your RSVP date and do follow up calls.  It also gives your guests a little more time to work out their schedules.

mmattoon

We sent ours out 8 or 9 weeks before the wedding date itself. It gave people 4 or 5 weeks to RSVP before our deadline. If you sent out STDs already, I wouldn't send them more than 10 weeks prior to the wedding date. Persaonlly, I don't really like getting them too much earlier than 8 weeks prior because if you aren't sure if you can make it or not there is a greater chance of losing the invitation.

MereFM99

I sent mine out so that guests would receive them 8 weeks before the wedding date, it was really early but I didn't do STDs so I wanted everyone to have plenty of time to make travel arrangements. If you send yours around Jan 1 and make the RSVP date Jan 25, your guests would have 3 weeks to RSVP, which is really plenty of time.

JVeaux

We sent ours out 8 weeks prior to the wedding date.  Our rsvp was 4 weeks prior to the wedding date (i.e. they had 4 weeks to respond) and then our caterer head count was due 10 days prior to the event so that gave us approx. 2 weeks to sort out non-responders.  I would recommend having your rsvp date at least 2 weeks prior to your head count date. I agree that Dec 1st is a little early.  If I were you I would do either the week prior or week after x-mas.  You will be fine if you send them out around Jan 1, you'll just have a smaller rsvp window, which I don't think is a big deal if you give yourself some cushion to follow up with non-responders.

tracy_k

Thanks ladies! I think I'll try to put them in the mail the week between Christmas and New Year's.I'm actually looking forward to telling my mom she was right, LOL.

lrkutney324

I'm having a similar problem, but with my Save the Dates. My mom wants to send them out around Dec/Jan and my wedding is in September. Her worry is that we will have a lot of OOT guests and the room block is only until July 25 and wants to give people plenty of time to book a room and make accomadations. Any opinions??