When to send wedding invitations & how to order invitations during COVID-19
The other day I had a client reach out and ask about wedding invitations and if she should wait to get them with everything going on with the pandemic or if there was something she could do so she wasn't pushing it too close to the date. I wasn't planning on doing an invitations wedding tips week, but it made me realize there's so many things that you just won't know if you've never planned a wedding before, not to mention all the details and etiquette that goes into just the wedding suites alone. If you're wondering when you should order your wedding invites, when to send them, have questions about RSVP's and tracking, or simply need help deciding what to do about ordering invitations with the uncertainty of the pandemic then you are in the right place!
The first question that you most likely have is "when in the world do I even order my wedding invitations?!" First, you will want to order and send out your save the dates 6-12 months in advance. No sooner because people will forget and no later because you will be sending the actual invites shortly after. If you are having a destination wedding, you should aim to send the save the dates closer to the year mark. This will allow people to make the necessary travel arrangements and prepare in an adequate amount of time to make the trip.
It is a good general rule of thumb that you should order your invitations 4 months before your wedding date. This will allow enough time for you to check them over when they arrive in the mail. There are companies that will allow you to order a sample of your invitations so that you can compare different styles, designs, and stationary. Basic Invite is one of those and has tons of options available. When you proceed with ordering all of your invitations, order an additional 25 invitations just to be safe. Your guest list may unexpectedly grow, coffee could spill on some, or some people may want an extra to keep. If you wait to order the extra and just get the exact amount that you need, it will be much more expensive when you place a second order versus a few dollars extra to add the additional 25 to the original order.
Once you have your invitation suites in hand and they are ready to go, send them out within 6-8 weeks of your wedding date. No sooner because people will forget to send a response and no later because you will need to get final guest count numbers to your vendors. If you are having a destination wedding, send your invitations out 12 weeks out from the date. At that point you would have already sent out your save the dates so you don't need to worry about people having time to plan.
When you are creating your invitations, you will be including a RSVP card that will require the invited guest to respond with a confirmation of attendance or a regret to decline. On the back side of this RSVP card, go ahead and number each upper corner. You should create an excel spreadsheet for RSVP tracking and on the spreadsheet, place each guests' name next to the corresponding number with a column indicating they are or aren't attending, what food preference they have, whether they've responded or not, and anything else you want to keep track of pertaining to that individual guest. Numbering the RSVP cards will make it extremely easy to go in and mark off everyone as they send their responses back.
Wedding invitation design and etiquette could literally be its own mini blog series (and maybe it will be in the future if there's enough interest), but I do wanna just give you a sneak peak/crash course on designing your invitations. You basically have three options: design your invitations using an invite website, have your planner design your invitations, or hire a wedding stationary company to design them for you. All three are all great options.
If you decide to do it on your own, your best bet is going to be to use a website like I mentioned earlier that will allow you to get proofs before ordering. They will have hundreds of design templates, fonts, inserts, and colors to choose from. Stick with elegant and neutral colors for the lettering. You can never go wrong with black fonts, gray, gold, and silver. Try to stay away from any neon colors or pastels that are impossible to read. When choosing your fonts, have your names in some type of script font and then all the other lettering in a block font. Do not use script for the entire invitation. It can be extremely difficult to read in smaller sizes.
Packing your invitation suites is another whole mini lesson in itself. I tried to find a diagram type image to illustrate how to pack it and I couldn't find anything! So I created this little template to follow. Follow the order of the invite and inserts closely.
1) The red wedding invitation goes on the bottom, then in the middle are all the inserts from largest on the bottom to the smallest on top which are in the greenish color.
2) The RSVP return envelope will go next with the RSVP card tucked under the envelope flap and this will go on the top of the stack. Keep everything facing in the same direction and with the wording up.
3) The orange one represents the inner envelope which will have all the invited guests' names on the back. Everything goes inside this envelope. Think of the diagram as a hierarchy: the stuff at the bottom goes into the middle piece and all of that goes into the top piece. So after packing the inner envelope with all the pieces, seal it and place it into the outer envelope.
4) The pink envelope represents the outer envelope which will have the addresses and the postage- everything goes inside this envelope.
Hopefully this little invite crash course helped you out! If it did, share it on your social channels to help out some other couples.