What is Save-the-date

Save-the-date is the early notice sent six to eight months before a wedding asking guests to hold the date on their calendar, well before the formal invitation arrives.

Save-the-dates became standard practice in the early 2000s as destination weddings, long-distance friendships, and tighter calendars made the four-to-six-week lead time of a formal invitation insufficient. The form is now nearly universal for weddings with significant out-of-town guest lists, and increasingly common for weddings within a single city as well.

Timing

Send save-the-dates six to eight months before the wedding for a domestic event and eight to twelve months for a destination wedding. The formal invitation follows about four months later, typically six to eight weeks before the wedding itself. Sending a save-the-date too late defeats its purpose; sending it more than a year out usually means the couple has not finalized other details, and the recipients are more likely to forget. Most planners recommend not sending one if the lead time is less than four months, an earlier-than-usual formal invitation does the same work.

What to include

The names of the couple, the date, the city (the venue can be a placeholder, celebration to follow), and a wedding-website URL if there is one. The save-the-date does not need to include the formal time of the ceremony, the dress code, or the RSVP card; all of that goes on the formal invitation. The implied message of a save-the-date is you are invited, the full invitation is coming, please plan around this.

Who gets one

Everyone invited to the wedding should receive a save-the-date, and conversely, anyone who receives a save-the-date should be sent a full invitation. Sending a save-the-date and then not following up with a real invitation is a wedding-etiquette failure that hurts feelings reliably. Couples who are still building the guest list should hold the save-the-dates until the list is firm; once the save-the-date is out, the named guest is on the invite list.