How early is too early to send wedding invitations?

I know the general rule of thumb is 8 weeks however knowing that some of my guests need extra advance notice in order to get time off work plus the post offices being so far behind, I am planning sending mine out 6 months in advance.

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Just out of curiosity, did you also/ are you planning on sending save the dates? Ive noticed recently, that a few of the weddings I've been invited to have sent their invites earlier then the 8 weeks. Some sent a save the date other just sent the invite

I would say anything longer than 10 weeks, you risk people putting them aside and then never going back to them. Also, many people don't know what their plans are more than a couple of months in advance. Add in anyone who works off shifts, will they know if they have to work? Many places won't grant a request off to far in advance

View Quoted Comment Yes I am still sending save the dates, I will mail them out about a year in advance. Partially because of the reasons stated previously and partially because if some family members choose to come they would be traveling a long way (I live/wedding is in Ohio and I have family in Alabama, Colorado, and Africa just to name a few)

We sent an electronic save the date about 7 months out and mailed our invitations about 11 weeks before. We wanted to give a little extra time because most of our guests will have to travel a couple hours for our wedding, plus it is in a college town and the homecoming football game is the same night so accommodations will book up early. Our RSVP deadline isn’t for another couple weeks so we’ll see how it worked out for us then…we’ve gotten a little over a third of them back thus far.

We sent ours out about 10 weeks in advance. We wanted to give people enough time since the mail have been slow!

We’re having a wedding in October where every single person has to travel, so essentially a destination wedding. Because of this we wanted to get info out to people to make travel arrangements so we sent them in July. Otherwise I would’ve waited until August

My wedding will be in March and I am sending them late December, early January. How the mail has been moving, definitely don't want any to get there late!

View Quoted Comment I was thinking to do the same thing but not sure how yet. Which way you sent your save the dates? Individually, groups? Email, WhatsApp, text? Tks

Our wedding is in October and invitations were sent out in mid-late July with a request to rsvp by August 31st. August 31st is 2 weeks prior to the date of when we need to provide our final count to the caterer. We did this to provide enough time in case we didn't receive the rsvps in time and also I read stories from other people that late rsvps or a low response of rsvps do occur. This ended up being true and we had to contact several people for their info. I found out that one friend never received my invitation in the mail. At the beginning of August, we were receiving a steady flow of rsvps and then we wouldn't receive one for several days. Keep this in mind when putting a reply by date on your rsvp card.

View Quoted Comment Think about the holidays as there will be an influx of mail during that time.

View Quoted Comment We also sent electronic save the dates and used a website where we could send them via email or text. I can't remember the name of it at this moment...FH found it. It was actually good because we could monitor when people opened the email/text to our save the date to ensure they received it.

We're doing all of ours electronically, but I think it partially depends on when your venue requires your final numbers. For example, for us, it was a month, and when we postponed, our venue asked for it to be 6 weeks instead. We don't want to be frantically chasing our attendees for their responses just before the venue's deadline, which means the deadline we'll give our guests for RSVPs is 2 months before the day , to give us time to call/email/whatever any slowpokes.

And from there, we need to make sure we give our guests enough time to actually respond having received the invite. You can't expect people to open and respond within a few days, so we'll probably give them 8 weeks, which means sending our invites no closer than 4 months before the day.

View Quoted Comment We sent them by email using Paperless Post. One per couple. It worked well and it was nice to be able to track when people opened it.

Getting married October 2. Sent save the dates in January and invites on July 12. It took two weeks for some people to get them!

I sent mine almost 3 months in advance because we have a lot of out of town guests and we didn't sent save the dates.

I sent mine 4 months out because it’s during a holiday week, & I know a lot of my guests will be coming from out of town.

View Quoted Comment Same here! Especially since we’re having a destination wedding where all of our guests have to travel. I don’t think there’s a time that’s necessarily too early of notice, but I do think that typically 8 weeks is the latest you should send them out just in regards to getting your head count back to your caterer, cake vendor, etc. in time!

Wedding is Mid March sending out invites Mid-Late December RSVP by February 1st. Giving the mail extra time especially around the Holidays.

Invitations are usually sent out between 6-8 weeks ahead of the vent with RSVP's due at about two weeks before (or whatever the venue wants). They should all be sent at one time to prevent people thinking they were "B"-listed.

Edited for clarity