Wedding Announcements...???

niak913

My future mother-in-law wants me to send Save-the-Dates to a lot of people that she is not planning on inviting to our destination wedding. She insists on having some sort of announcement sent so that the people she knows will be aware that their son is getting married. What is the protocol in this situation? Do I buy separate wedding announcements? Will people who recieve the STD expect a formal invitation (I assume, yes)?

StephanieM22

Sending a save the date means you wil be inviting these people. Do not let her send them to people who are not invited. You can do announcements but they go out the day of the wedding or later saying  Mr. Jones and Miss. Smith got married. It lets people know after the fact not before hand. 

If she wants everyone to know her son is getting married maybe have her do an engagement announcement in the local paper so that everone knows but does not think they are invited. 

ginadog

It's not customary to send out engagement annoucement or we're getting married soon annoucements to anyone.

Usually people don't sent any sorts of wedding announcement before the couple is actually married.  Wedding announcements go to people who were not invited to the wedding but you still want to let them know.  The above poster mentioned sending them out the say of the wedding.  However, this will not be possible for me because I will want to get nice photos from my photographer which will take a couple weeks for her to edit.  Wedding annoucements do get sent out after you're married but are not required by any means. 

Save the Dates are only intended for people you will be inviting.  They usually go out if you have a lot of people needing to make lodging reservations.  If everyone is local to you, then you probably don't need to do them.  Some people save STDs just for the people they are positive they are inviting. 

Not everyone who gets an invitation has to get an STD.  But everyone who gets an STD must get an invite.

PS - if you do end up making wedding annoucements, you are not obligated to send any to FMIL's friends unless you want to.  You could however, design the annoucement (shutterfly.com has some premade ones) and then let her pay for them.