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Wedding Etiquette Forum

How much notice to give out of town guests

We're planning to get married in about a year. Our first choice of wedding locations does not allow you to book it until 6 months prior to the event. And there's no guarantee that your desired dates will be available. But I love this place and want to try for it. So in order to make sure that I get my first choice in locations, we won't know the exact date of our wedding until six months before the event. My fiance has a lot of out of town guests, and his groomsman will out-of-towners, too, who have to travel cross-country to come to our wedding. He is concerned that this will be a bit late to ask our friends to be in the wedding party and send out our save-the-date notices. He would prefer that we pick a date, and stick to that date no matter what. Since we're having a breakfast wedding, we will have no problem finding an alternate location should my first choice not be available. So we could organize our wedding party and send out save-the-date notices prior to 6 months, but then I'll only get one shot at the location I want. Should I compromise, and accept that I might have to switch locations? Or should he chill out and let his out of town guests know the date once we have the location nailed down six months prior. Another option is we tell the important people that we are looking at 2 potential weekends, and that we will let them know the exact date once we know it.

Re: How much notice to give out of town guests

  • Our entire engagement was 6 months long.  I think we booked the venue about 4 months out.  People flew 3000 miles to attend our wedding whereas people who were 40 miles away didn't make it.  
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  • 6 months should be plenty of time to plan travel arrangements for a wedding, assuming that they won't have to fly internationally. Just be sure to send the STDs as soon as possible after you've booked your venue(s). You can also tell important guests potential dates or even a range of dates (around so-and-so) so that they can have an idea of when the wedding will be even though they won't know the actual date until later on when they get the STD/invite.

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  •    We are doing a destination wedding that had the same restrictions. We couldn't book them until 6 months out. We are having immediate family only though. We asked everyone if there were any dates in Oct. they couldn't come so we wouldn't book those, then when we got the date last week we let everyone know when it's going to be. This might not work if you have a larger guest list. 
  • TSCap said:
    We're planning to get married in about a year. Our first choice of wedding locations does not allow you to book it until 6 months prior to the event. And there's no guarantee that your desired dates will be available. But I love this place and want to try for it. So in order to make sure that I get my first choice in locations, we won't know the exact date of our wedding until six months before the event. My fiance has a lot of out of town guests, and his groomsman will out-of-towners, too, who have to travel cross-country to come to our wedding. He is concerned that this will be a bit late to ask our friends to be in the wedding party and send out our save-the-date notices. He would prefer that we pick a date, and stick to that date no matter what. Since we're having a breakfast wedding, we will have no problem finding an alternate location should my first choice not be available. So we could organize our wedding party and send out save-the-date notices prior to 6 months, but then I'll only get one shot at the location I want. Should I compromise, and accept that I might have to switch locations? Or should he chill out and let his out of town guests know the date once we have the location nailed down six months prior. Another option is we tell the important people that we are looking at 2 potential weekends, and that we will let them know the exact date once we know it.
    If you can't book until 6 months out, why wouldn't your date be available, since no one should be able to book it? If you want June 6, and you call on December 6, no one else should have booked it yet unless they called right before you, no?
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  • laurynm84 said:
    TSCap said:
    We're planning to get married in about a year. Our first choice of wedding locations does not allow you to book it until 6 months prior to the event. And there's no guarantee that your desired dates will be available. But I love this place and want to try for it. So in order to make sure that I get my first choice in locations, we won't know the exact date of our wedding until six months before the event. My fiance has a lot of out of town guests, and his groomsman will out-of-towners, too, who have to travel cross-country to come to our wedding. He is concerned that this will be a bit late to ask our friends to be in the wedding party and send out our save-the-date notices. He would prefer that we pick a date, and stick to that date no matter what. Since we're having a breakfast wedding, we will have no problem finding an alternate location should my first choice not be available. So we could organize our wedding party and send out save-the-date notices prior to 6 months, but then I'll only get one shot at the location I want. Should I compromise, and accept that I might have to switch locations? Or should he chill out and let his out of town guests know the date once we have the location nailed down six months prior. Another option is we tell the important people that we are looking at 2 potential weekends, and that we will let them know the exact date once we know it.
    If you can't book until 6 months out, why wouldn't your date be available, since no one should be able to book it? If you want June 6, and you call on December 6, no one else should have booked it yet unless they called right before you, no?
    These are my thoughts, too. 

    However, once the date is set, I would call the VIPs and family to let them know of the date and location with invites sent to those called at the 8 week mark. 
  • We booked our venue 18 months in advance, and told our international guests (which was almost half of them) straight away, because where we live is really expensive to fly to. Most of them booked their flights straight away.
  • 70% of my guest list is out of town and we sent our save the dates about 5.5 months out. I would just have your save the dates ready to go and you can add the date and location as soon as you know 6 months out and send.
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