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Wedding Etiquette Forum
stategirl85
member
Sending invites out 12 weeks early?
I am having an OOT wedding (5 hours away) in which neither FI, I, or any of our guests live in the area where our wedding will be held. (Kinda decided to do a destination wedding without being too far from home). We have a block of rooms reserved at our resort, however when looking through the paperwork on Sunday we noticed that it states that rooms will be released from the block 8 weeks prior to our wedding date. Now, I know that just because the rooms are released from our block does not mean that our guests cannot still get our discount but I am worried about the venue booking up and people not being able to stay at the resort. It is a big resort, multiple hotels at different price points, along with condos that are available for rent, but if the resort fills up there really isn't another option for the guests in the surrounding area. Since everyone attending the wedding will be from OOT I know that everyone will need a place to stay.
I know that traditionally invites should be sent out 6-8 weeks prior to the wedding but I was contemplating sending ours out 12 weeks prior. Along with the invitations I was planning to send resort information and highlighting the fact that the rooms get released 8 weeks prior. I would not make my rsvp an earlier, just want to give everyone a heads up that if they plan on coming they should contact the resort in order to make sure they get a room in the block. Thoughts? Is this too early?
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Re: Sending invites out 12 weeks early?
Did you send save the dates? If so, and if you had yor website address on there so that the guests could see the hotel information, you don't need to send them so early.
however, i have been annoyed before about calling to book a hotel room the day an invitaton arrived and being told that the block pricing was no longer available. i would email the VIPs about it and then send the invites 9-10 weeks out - that would give people time to book if they are on top of it. i'm sending my invitations at 9 weeks because at the 8 week mark i will be out of the country on a two week vacation, so that just made sense (90% of our guests are from out of town and they have save the dates, but i just want to make sure they are able to get everything together in time...my dad's fmily especally are known for being very last minute, which isn't going to work out for them in this case.)
I'm sending my invitations out at the three month mark because of this, even though it is contrary to generally accepted etiquette because:
1. Room rates will go up after the block is released
2. It is very likely that the resort will be booked closer to the wedding.
3. The nearest comparable hotels are about a 30 minute drive away.
In my opinion, denying guests the opportunity to book a room in the block under these circumstances by not sending invites out until the exact time the block is released is a bigger etiquette breach than sending invites out a few weeks earlier than generally considered the proper time to do so. Sending them a month before the block release date (so guests should get them 3-4 weeks before release date - we have some internationally mailed invites too) seemed the best compromise to me. Enough time for guests to book rooms if they want to, while still trying to limit the amount of gap between when invites go out and when the wedding happens.
I really don't understand the 6-8 week rule. I know for most people if they are booking time off to go out of town you need to know at least 4-5 months in advance.
We arn't doing save-the-dates, FI think's they are a waste of time and paper, We are thinking at the moment of sending our invitations out in late April/early May for our Sept wedding. If we sent them in July/Aug no one would come, they need time to book things off and travel.
I think the main issue with sending them so early, especially if travel will be required and STDs were not sent, is that half the time the person will get the invite and put it aside thinking "ok i'll have to figure out if i can go to this and then i'll respond." and then they lose it, or forget all about responding, and then you have to call them personally to follow up. Whereas if they were previously aware of the date and location (from a STD for example) they would have likely already booked their travel before the 6-8 week mark, so they would simply open the invitation and immeidately fill out the RSVP and mail it back the next day.
it's also a bit risky to send them so early - what if something changes that you can't update on there? What if your venue burns down? then you're just going to have to send ANOTHER invite to everyone with updated info on it. So at that point...it would have made more sense to just send a STD to begin with and an invitation 6 weeks out.
I still think it's a stupid rule and I really don't see those being valid issues as to why I would send an invite 2 months before the wedding.
I don't understand the mentality on this site of "Oh my goodness, I would have to call people, like on the phone??!!!???" I am asuming that the people you invite to weddings you actually like, why the big phone phobia?
I don't know about other people, but we sent out STDs because our wedding is on a holiday weekend in the summer. So many people make their vacation plans months in advance. We spread by word of mouth as much as we could, but even then people we saw on a regular basis kept forgetting - can't imagine any of our more distant relatives or friends/family with lots of stuff going on would remember. Plus, what was I supposed to do, send invitations out a year in advance to my family in rural China (where it can take up to a year, sometimes longer, to get a visa)? The most reliable way to contact my family back home is by mail. If I'm going to send something to them anyway, why not send something pretty that has all of our relevant information for planning purposes? For you, STDs may not be necessary, but it's a pretty darn good option for some of us.