How far in advance did you send out invites?

[Jilian]

I swear I've asked this before but I cannot find the thread, so sorry for asking again. How far before your wedding did you send out invitations? I'm thinking 4 mos at the least. My aunt (who is a wedding planner at a high end place in Boston) swears that 6-8 weeks is enough. This seems insane to me! If I wait until 8 weeks out to send the invite with all of the booking info that means people likely won't be booking until 6 weeks out and we're planning for March; one of the busiest seasons. They'd be lucky to get any room by 6 weeks out. Not to mention we're doing the carribean beach resort and that tends to book up @ 3 mos out. All of the google searches I've done say that you need to send out an invite for a destination wedding at least 4 mos in advance, if not more. That was my thinking. My H says to do it now, we're just under 7 mos out.

So when did you send your invites? Did people appreciate them being sent earlier than 6-8 weeks in advance? Do you agree that 6-8 weeks is way too close or am I just being silly?

 

[princesswendy720]

I'm planning on sending 4-5 months out. Too early and people won't know if they can attend (for example, they night not be able to request vacation time for March yet). 6-8 weeks is for a local wedding.

 

[mebbradley]

We're planning on sending ours out in 3 stages. The save-the-dates will go out at a year out, then formal invites at 8 months and our final rsvp with a news letter will go out at 4 months. We are doing ours this way because of the amount of military who need to project leave.

 

[Jilian]

Good point about vacation time. I'm thinking of sending them out @ 4 mos and that would be around Thanksgiving time. That way people would be able to pick their vacation time sometime in December and RSVP and book their trip when they know they've gotten the vacation time off. My mom and aunt still think it is silly but I don't think they fully understand Disney and how resorts book up fairly quickly. It isn't like we're trying to get people in at the local holiday inn, it is the most popular vacation spot in the world!

 

[mickin]

We sent ours out in may requesting that they be back by the first week in October...when our 90 day payment is due. Our wedding is in January so that was about 6 months out. We wanted to give people the most time to think about it cause of the hotels and planes etc. We have a little over a month till there all due and I'd say we have about half of the reply cards in...so well see

 

[irishwishes]

We sent ours out 4 months in advance. It was enough time to get RSVPs back and chase people down to get they're RSVP if we didn't hear from them. There is no way you can wait until 6-8 weeks in advance. That's just not enough time and that's only for local weddings, not destination. You'd owe your final bill before you heard back from everyone.

 

[lurkyloo]

Technically, all the planning and booking info doesn't belong in the formal invitation, which is why it's OK to send invites out so close to the wedding. It can go in the Save the Date or in a separate mailing that goes out well in advance of the wedding so people have time to plan.

We sent our invitations out 2 months in advance with a deadline 1 month later. They just had the invitation, an RSVP card, and a pocket transportation schedule. Disney had already sent out save-the-dates for us with all the wedding room block booking info, and we sent more booking and planning info via email about 5 months out. 1 month before the wedding we mailed a newsletter with info about transportation and the welcome party.

 

[JenHeartWDW]

I followed a similar path as Carrie. I had Disney send out the save-the-dates for us. That is probably the most important information because it contains all the good details that guests need to know in order to request off work/reserve rooms. I sent the invitations about 2 months in advance and then the newsletter about a month before the wedding. This worked out fine for us... but just to add in, we did not have our wedding planned for years (or even a year) like many do on the boards. So there was only so much advanced notice we could provide.

 

[Jilian]

OK, that makes a lot of sense to me. I'd love to not include all of the booking and travel info in the invitation. I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to cram 3-4 additional cards into the invite without making it look like a disaster. I like the idea of sending another newsletter out with booking info and then sending the invites closer to the 3 month mark. Thanks for the clarification!

 

[kharmagirl]

Like Carrie and some of the others, I sent out STD's five months before the wedding - which was when we knew we were getting married at Disney. I directed everyone to our website which was loaded with information about everything they could ever want to know about our wedding, Disney, where to stay, transportation, etc. and encouraged them to book as soon as possible. We asked people to pre-RSVP so we could get a count but that didn't work - the only people who replied were our parents and aunts (and we invited 109 people...). I mailed the invites out two months ahead with a deadline that was a month later, giving us a week before final payment. I had quite a few people tell me that they were waiting to RSVP because they didn't know if they could make it. There are still dozens of people who have not made hotel reservations. The DFTW guy told me that tends to be the norm for people to wait until the last minute. I just figure I tried and if people miss out on a discount or have to stay somewhere else than that is their fault - there's only so much you can do.