Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2020, during the Covid-19 health crisis, when we were all uncertain about whether any weddings would be able to take place in the coming months. If you are fortunate enough to be reading this when things are back to normal, feel free to ignore all my Covid-related caveats!

When it comes time to begin letting guests know about your wedding, you might be wondering when the best time is to mail your save-the-dates and your wedding invitations. For save-the-dates, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, so I’ll start there.

When to send save-the-dates

Sending save-the-date cards is a relatively new wedding tradition. Until a few years ago, this was not a thing. People just received a wedding invitation and then decided whether or not to attend. Simple!

But weddings are getting more elaborate, and friends and family are becoming more far-flung, requiring more people to travel to attend any given wedding. With that in mind, an informal notification to guests that a wedding will be held months in the future gives people extra time to arrange their schedules and travel accommodations.

TL;DR here’s the video version

How far in advance to send a save-the-date depends on your wedding location and guest list.

• For an international destination wedding (Mexico, Italy, Croatia, etc.) send save-the-dates 1 year in advance. International travel is difficult and expensive, so your guests will need plenty of time to plan.

• For a domestic destination wedding (Hawaii, a ranch in Montana, a ski resort in Vermont), 10-12 months before the wedding would be a good time to send save-the-dates.

• If many of your guests will have to travel to your wedding, regardless of where it’s being held, 6-8 months’ notice will be appreciated. That gives people enough advance notice to block off time on their calendars (especially for a summer wedding when family vacations may conflict).

• If you are getting married in your hometown, where you still live, and where most of your friends and family also live, you can get away without save-the-dates at all. But if you still want to send them, 6 months out from the wedding is standard.

If you are planning your wedding on a short time-frame (six month or less) send save-the-dates as soon as humanly possible. Don’t wait until you book a photographer, have an engagement photo session, get the photos back from the photographer, order printed save-the-date cards, receive them, and then mail them. You don’t have that kind of time!

Electronic save-the-dates are also perfectly acceptable, regardless of whether you’re in a time crunch. Paperless Post has some really cute options! You’ll just need to gather email addresses for everyone on your guest list.

One important piece of information to include on your save-the-dates is the URL for your wedding website. Even if there’s no information on the website yet, you should still include the URL. That way guests can check back and get the information they need for travel, sending a gift, and attending the wedding.

When to send the wedding invitation

To figure out when to mail your wedding invitations, you need to work backwards from your wedding date. Your caterer and venue will want your final head count 10-14 days before your wedding. Some people will forget to respond to your invitation, so you need to allow yourself time to track down RSVP stragglers.

Setting an RSVP deadline of 2 weeks before you have to give the caterer a final headcount will give you time to follow up with anyone who didn’t respond to the invitation. But you also need to give people a little bit of time between when they receive the invitation and when they respond.

It’s best not to give people too much time to let an invitation sit around, so you want them to have the invitation about a month before they have to reply. This means you should mail invitations about 8-10 weeks before your wedding date.

• Example wedding date: October 10

• Final head count due: September 26

• RSVP deadline: September 12

• Mail invitations: between August 1 and 15

In our current time of lockdowns, shelter-in-place, limits on gatherings, social distancing, and mask-wearing, there’s no way to know for sure when we’re going to be allowed to have weddings again. Even if you take a chance and mail your wedding invitations, many of your guests will not be able to commit to attending, especially the ones who have to travel.

Couples need to be prepared to have smaller-than-anticipated gatherings, whether because of size limits on group gatherings or because of guests’ general reluctance to get on a plane and stay in a hotel. Even 2021 couples should keep this in mind. It’s going to be a long time before we get back to “normal.”

And although I usually don’t recommend electronic wedding invitations, this is the type of situation where they really are your best option. Using that October 10 wedding date from the above example, you would need to order your wedding invitations in July so get them in time to be mailed in early August. But we won’t know in July (or August) whether October weddings are even allowed to happen!

So the best way to save yourself time, money, and stress is to design an e-vite. That way, if you have to postpone closer to the wedding date, you have an easy way to update everyone. Again, Paperless Post has many styles and designs. (This post wasn’t written by them; I just really like them, lol.)

At the time of this writing, Minted and Basic Invite (my two go-to sources for wedding invitations) are not offering digital wedding invitations.

Change-the-date cards

If you find yourself needing to reschedule your wedding, change-the-date cards are now everywhere. You can order printed cards to match your original invitation suite, send electronic notices, or even just send an email. You should send out your change-the-date notice as soon as you know what your new date is.

Here’s hoping that change-the-date cards quickly become a thing of the past and that we can all start planning things again soon!

Further reading: Who Gets a Plus-One Wedding Invitation?