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Getting engaged is exciting, to say the least! It’s all great fun — celebrating your engagement, feeling the love with family and friends (and your partner!) before inevitably trawling the internet for your perfect venue, dress and stationery. Once you share your news, everybody wants to know when the big day is — and once that date is set, the real work begins.
Step one? An increasingly popular piece of wedding stationery in recent years is save the date cards. As times change and every industry does too, there's a good chance your grandparents hadn’t heard of save the date cards when they were planning their nuptials, but don’t let that put you off sending them now!
We always recommend keeping up with (or reading up on) wedding etiquette and current wedding trends if you want to plan the perfect day. Save the date cards are now a classic piece of stationery for any wedding.
As an important and exciting step for any newly engaged couple, you’ll need to understand the basics if you do choose to send these useful cards. Throughout this article, we aim to cover all the questions you might need answering when sending save the date cards for your wedding.
Save the date cards are a simple way of asking the recipients to keep your special day free in their calendars. They are not actual wedding invitations, but small cards sent to let your friends and family know in advance that you are planning a wedding and the date of the wedding. This gives everyone ample opportunity to mark the date in their calendar, book time off work, or even book hotels or flights if they live further afield!
Save the dates are often the first step in bringing the magic of your wedding to life, as well as being a great way of spreading the exciting news to anyone that might not have heard. However, the main reason to send a save the date is to ensure as many of your guests as possible can make it! It would, after all, be a huge shame to go through the trouble of planning and booking your dream wedding day, only to discover that half of your guests can’t come because they’ve already booked a holiday in advance.
Sending save the date cards can be an exciting and creative part of wedding planning, but if that's not enough to convince you, have a flick through some gorgeous design inspiration here.
Only you can decide if you need to send out save the date cards. You certainly don’t have to — they are not compulsory. But it would help if you consider whether they might be appropriate or necessary for you according to the personal circumstances of your wedding. We recommend that you consider sending save the date cards under the following circumstances:
Don’t worry if you haven’t officially confirmed all your wedding details — save the dates are meant to be kept simple. It is important to consider including whether your wedding will be local or require travel and hotel bookings. The priority is that as many of your guests as possible can make it. Details such as this allow guests to organise vital plans such as childcare and budget.
When you should start planning your save the date cards all depends on how big the wedding will be. As it can take a couple of months to compile the guest list and collect all the names and address details, we recommend planning a month or two before sending your save the dates.
Top tip: keep a spreadsheet with all the guest list details so that it’s easy to find, share or edit information later on down the line. This will also give you time to remember anyone you have forgotten and narrow the list down if necessary.
The biggest and often most challenging task when planning a wedding is creating the guest list. It’s incredible how quickly a list can grow and how difficult it is to exclude people. “Jack from the pub is always so friendly; we can’t possibly exclude him” or “I’ve known Sarah for years; I have to invite her!”
We know it’s hard, but be strong! We recommend thinking over these questions before deciding whether or not to add someone to your wedding guest list.
Of course, family politics will play some part in this, but we recommend staying true to you. This is your big day, after all. You won’t get a redo, so surround yourself with the people you really want there supporting you.
You will also need to decide whether children will be included or not, whether people can bring a wedding date (plus one) and make some executive decisions when it comes to drama or interpersonal challenges. Unfortunately, this is one of those jobs that has to be done before you can move onto sending your save the date cards.
Who you want to send save the date cards to is a personal choice, and often one of budget. You could choose to send save the dates out to those family and friends you couldn’t bear to be without on your big day, but doing this does have the potential for drama if word gets out and some family and friends feel left out. So be wary of that. Ideally, you would send save the date cards to all those on your wedding guest list, but if your wedding budget doesn't allow for this, it's not the end of the world.
Remember: once you’ve sent someone a save the date, you’re usually obliged to send a wedding invitation too! Choose your guest list carefully and critically.
As a rule of thumb, sooner is better than later! Ideally, you want your guests to have ample notice, giving them plenty of time to book off work and make travel, childcare or pet care arrangements. If you can send them out a year or more before, the save the dates will be more effective as people will then have the date in their diaries when they are booking holidays or other plans for the coming year. It’s not unusual for couples to send their save the dates out up to 2 years in advance in exceptional circumstances, followed by a formal invitation at a later date.
Be aware that if you send out your wedding invitations too far in advance, instead of an initial save the date, there’s a danger of them being forgotten a year or two down the line.
A save the date card should be kept simple with just a few basic details. The absolute bare minimum is, of course, the date and your names. But we always recommend that you include an approximate location as well. This could just be a town or a county if you’re unsure. If you have the venue booked, you could include that. The likelihood is that when you send your save the dates, you won't have that many details finalised anyway, so send the basics.
Announcing the upcoming invitation by adding a line to say something like “formal invitation to follow”, means guests won’t assume it’s an invite and start calling you for further details. It is also helpful for your guests to know if children or a plus-one will be allowed. Addressing the envelope to all those included is one way of easily sorting this.
If you are planning on getting married abroad, it is always worth including the venue and possibly even details on hotels and flights on your save the dates. Anything else can go on an invitation closer to the date and when you have confirmed details. You could also include your wedding website if you have one.
You can experiment as much as you like with the colour scheme on your first piece of wedding stationery since save the date cards don’t need to match your theme or the stationery you send out later on!
However, if you do already know your theme or colour scheme, then by all means, go ahead. Try a design that gives your guests an insight into the tone of the wedding and the kind of couple you are. Set the mood: are you going formal or informal, vintage or retro? Is it taking place abroad, on a beach, in a barn or a country house? Are you having a night wedding or want to send save the dates for an evening do? Check out our range of save the evening cards to set the mood perfectly. Get creative!
How about including a magnet to ensure your save the date takes pride of place on a fridge and doesn't get forgotten? You could make it extra special by sending your save the dates with matching envelope liners or stickers. Have a look at sites such as Pinterest for ideas and be creative with your wording. The options are endless.
Find unique and creative save the date cards made with high-quality paper, suitable for any theme online at Vintage Prints. We create a range of exquisite wedding stationery and stunning save the date cards to make the planning of your dream day as smooth as possible. For more information, contact us today.
