Save The Dates

daisiegg

Hi everyone , happy sunny Monday morning!

I am sooooo excited that we have booked our wedding venue so now the date is definite - 6th April 2013 Now that I definitely know the date it got me thinking about letting other people know.

So, some questions re. Save the Dates...

- Are you sending them out? I kind of want to but on the other hand, no one I know has ever heard of them and my mum and OH think it's an unneccessary expense.

- If you are sending them out, when? Is one year in advance too early? We will be inviting people from abroad as well as loads of my family who will have to travel from Scotland to the South East of England, plus our wedding will be during the school holidays and I know lots of people plan to go away.

- What are you using? Are you getting them from the same place as your invitations, matching? I've found lots of options for getting them really cheaply online - but then they won't match whatever our invitations end up being. I'm not sure if I really care!

- If you are getting cheap business-card sized ones, what type of envelope are you putting them in? Can't help thinking little tiny cards will seem strange in a normal sized envelope?

- Is it acceptable to do Save the Date in a different (free!) way such as email or Facebook, if the proper invitations will be lovely paper ones? I know this would be a simple and free way to do it but I'm not sure I like the message it sends.

Ok, I think that's all! Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

xx

MsShopper

We weren't going to bother with Save The Dates (I've never received one myself) but I'm glad we did as printing problems with our invites meant they went out a month late.

We did ours as an image embedded in an email that matched our stationery. It just had basic info (date, location) and a link to our wedding website.

If we hadn't done that (ie something matching our stationery), we would have have used Paperless Post. Love their stuff.

I don't think a year is too far in advance, bearing in mind the school holidays and people booking flights etc. Ours went out about six months in advance, but that's mainly because I was being a bit disorganised!

johannalf88

I sent out save the dates about 18 months in advance. I wasn't goin to bother, (October isn't exactly peak season) but the night we decided we got a call from OH sister (my BM) who asked when it was, because she had just booked Michael McIntyre tickets! Luckily it turned out to be the week after!

As for how:
We just used email! :money: I didn't want to pay for them, so we just designed a PDF picture, and then emailed it to everyone who we would be disappointed if they didn't attend. So best friends, family etc. Some people will get an invite who didn't get a Save the Date, but we didn't want to over send them.

Main thing we thought though wa we didn want to pay for them! So no postage, just a few of our own man hours (which I enjoyed! :rotfl:)

Regarding linking them to invites, we chose a motif to use on them (an acorn) and are using it on the invite too. We are also using similar colours etc.

Em88

We told our family guests in person once we booked the date and sent out a facebook message to our friends. We only have a small number of guests and wouldn't have bothered to tell them the date so early if they hadn't needed to book flights. It wasn't so much a 'save the date' of giving them as much notice as we could for flights.

We then gave the invitations out over Christmas. The invitations were homemade slabs of chocolate with the icing piped on. The wrapper had details about the wedding.

lisajane8482

We are doing save the dates. Our wedding is in the July so the kids are still at school but we have family members who go away in July and family who are far away.

We used vistaprint and ordered the magnets when they were free. We haven't sent them out yet, we are planning on sending them sometime between July and October this year, although I have handed a few out to close family as I was super excited when I got them. I am thinking about buying some nice cheap note cards and putting them inside with a little note saying something like "we would love you to join us as we tie the knot, please save the date to share in our celebrations" (but better).

daisiegg

Em88 wrote: »

We then gave the invitations out over Christmas. The invitations were homemade slabs of chocolate with the icing piped on. The wrapper had details about the wedding.

What amazing invitations!! :T

daisiegg

lisajane8482 wrote: »

We used vistaprint and ordered the magnets when they were free. We haven't sent them out yet, we are planning on sending them sometime between July and October this year, although I have handed a few out to close family as I was super excited when I got them. I am thinking about buying some nice cheap note cards and putting them inside with a little note saying something like "we would love you to join us as we tie the knot, please save the date to share in our celebrations" (but better).

I love the idea of the magnets but I was put off by the thought of how much postage would cost, as I thought they'd be quite heavy? As you've actually got them, how heavy are they please?

lisajane8482

daisiegg wrote: »

I love the idea of the magnets but I was put off by the thought of how much postage would cost, as I thought they'd be quite heavy? As you've actually got them, how heavy are they please?

I have no idea how heavy they are, I hadn't really thought about it until now . I think they should be less than 100g as they are quite light but I shall weigh one tonight when I get home from work and let you know

minerva_windsong

I would be letting the people you really want there know as soon as possible as it's school holidays and people may well be booking to go away. Ditto anyone who might be travelling from a considerable distance and needs to book plane tickets etc.

That said, depending how many 'key' people you have - and that's a definition that's really up to you - I would probably not do save the dates but would instead phone/text/email/Facebook those key people, depending on what they're more likely to notice and what will be quickest for you (I don't check my Facebook that often for instance but check my email every day). But that's mainly because I'm cheap!

If you do want cards though Paperchase has started doing nice wedding invites, including packs of blank cards - obviously if your guest list runs into the hundreds then that might not be the best thing, and Hobbycraft is certainly likely to just do plain cards cheaper, but it might be worth a look.

mummyroysof3

i tbh wouldnt send oficial save the dates but would contact anyone you want to attend so they have as much notice for flights etc as possible.i think a more personal approch is better

double_mummy

daisiegg wrote: »

I love the idea of the magnets but I was put off by the thought of how much postage would cost, as I thought they'd be quite heavy? As you've actually got them, how heavy are they please?

they are not very heavy at all daisie the ones we are posting are easily covered by a 2nd class stamp

we also got magnets from vistaprint as a spur of the moment thing and we are carrying a couple around and giving them out when we see people we want to come (guest list is pretty much done)