I am getting married in DC and we have one guest who lives in Japan now. My fiance and I have known him since we were younger and we invited his parents. We sent both his parents and him a save the date, now how do I go about the invitations. I would assume his RSVP would be a NO because just to come back for our wedding is expensive and also haven't seen him in like 6 years. Do I send him an invitation anyways or should I kindly ask him if coming is even a remote possiblity so I don't have to waste an invitation? Also if asking if he is coming or not is the way to go, how would I go about it? I don't want to seem rude that he has to answer right away or feel obligated to send a gift if he gets an invitation,etc
Re: Invitations and Out of the Country Guests
What is the purpose of asking someone to "save the date" for you if you aren't going to invite them to the thing they saved the date for? Mail him the invitation.
If you are inviting guests from outside the US, a lot of countries offer postage online. We were able to buy postage from the UK and Germany online to attach to our RSVP envelopes for our international guests. Canadian postage we had mailed to our home. Just extending them the same courtesy as the other guests in the US.
But if you sent a Save the Date, you must send an invitation (there's only a few exceptions to this and being OOC didn't qualify).
The truth is that many countries don't have as good of a mailing system as the U.S, so do you really want to risk sending the invite and not knowing if he got it? In this modern age, most of my friends told me via phone or facebook that they were coming....Only older people would care about a physical invite.
I didn't think this was "tacky" whatsoever.
Please ignore this. I sent invitations to countries like Germany, Australia, and Japan, and no one had any problems.
If you have the correct address and look up the proper country format, the chances of them getting it is just as likely as a US address (maybe better).