Wedding invites?

I'm not sure how things are done today, but when I got married I was told to send the invitations 6 weeks in advance.

I have received two such wedding invitations. I checked the wedding website and RSVP'd before the date they required.

It took you more effort to type this post, than it would have to RSVP for this wedding. Have you even checked their wedding site to see what the actual rsvp date is?

Peas and weddings, man. You never fail to dissapoint with the pearl clutching.

I was a wedding calligrapher/invitation designer for years, and I have zero issue with this. Traditional invitations are a huge expense, they use a lot of resources, and generally go into the trash.

That's how it goes now. We just got what I thought was a save the date for a wedding next year and my kids informed me it is indeed the invitation.

With a daughter getting married in two months, who is mailing an invitation but with all of the information on the website and the RSVPs on the website, I've learned to just adapt to the new way this works.

I personally think everything about tradition wedding invitation etiquette needs to be tossed - it just doesn’t make sense in today’s world. Invitations 6-8 weeks ahead of the event is ridiculous. Basically everyone I know has their weekends booked months out. Sending a printed save the date AND a printed invitation for every even seems wasteful in a number of ways.

A wedding website with all the details makes sooooo much sense.

Just RSVP and recognize etiquette evolves.

This could explain the "we need to know now"....

With many places still having space limits, as well as financial limits and budgetary constraints.....there is often an  "A" list and a "B" list.
The A list invites get sent out first. If an A lister sends their regrets, that still leaves room for a B lister to be invited.
Sometimes it a matter of "we can't invite everyone", but if regrets start coming in, then it's possible to invite someone else that unfortunately had to be left out on the go around.

We are both going to be over 60, and our median guest age is up there. We did go ahead with the free website provided by The Knot. I wasn't going to, but fiance logged in and started filling out the fields with enthusiasm.

It is a cool way to provide directions, parking, and other specifics that people might ask over and over again, or that wouldn't nicely fit on a paper invite.

We sent postcard SAVETHEDATES, and some of them took over 2 weeks to get to their destinations, which are all in the same state except one.

We will send out paper invites because of our mostly mature guest list.

How long till the big day, Sharla?  I'm super excited for you!

In early December, we sent Save the Dates to my daughter's May wedding. We felt save the dates would be nice since at least half the guests were from out of town and would need to make travel plans. The save the dates included the address of the wedding website where all the hotel information was listed.

We're sending out the invitations tomorrow. We're including an RSVP card because our wedding planner said in her experience people were better about returning RSVP cards than RSVPing online. It really wasn't a big deal to me one way or the other.

We're asking people to RSVP for the mid-May wedding by April 11th. I think that is a reasonable time for both in town and out of town guests to decide whether to accept an invitation.

My nephew is getting married next September. They are not going to send Save the Dates because they have very few out of town guests. They've already had a big engagement party and most of their friends and family know when they are getting married. They'll send out invitations about 8 weeks before the wedding, which is pretty standard around here. Their RSVPs will be online because their wedding planner, unlike our wedding planner, thinks online RSVPs are easier to manage.

I think different things work for different circumstances. I try and RSVP by the time I'm requested to do so in whatever manner the bride and groom asks me to.

Aw, thanks! July 22nd.

My last invitation included a digital save the date several months ahead. Later on, the invitation was also digital with a spot to rsvp. It also included a link to the wedding venue.

I got married in November, so I have had the chance to see the current trends. The young brides have no clue that older generations were told to send the invitations four weeks or six weeks ahead of time. I would have worried that if I sent them months in advance, my guests would have not had them top of mind when the wedding actually rolled around. I also didn’t want to send my older guests to a website to RSVP. We just put our cell phone numbers and asked our guests to text or call either of us. Almost everyone replied this way, which was a nice surprise.

Frankly, my observations as an older bride, but one who is completely comfortable with technology, was that my percentages of return were still higher when I used the simplest of message to communicate. I think that when you combine the lack of a universal RSVP mentality with a lack of technology adoption, you really decrease your RSVP rate.

You say it's someone you're close to, so I"m guessing you're on the "have to invite" list. (That doesn't mean you aren't wanted, just that you're an A lister.) Once they know how many A listers are probably coming, that would free them up to add more of the friends or extended family, etc. By asking the A listers to respond earlier, they can still send out the B list in a reasonably timely manner.

At least, that's my guess. I got married 9000 years ago, and our total list wasn't too big anyway, so this is just based off of other people I've known!