Early Invites + No Save the Dates

We wanted to let our people know about hotel information as we are getting married out of town so we just created a facebook group/event to act as the STD. We are getting married October 2022. Sending out invites early could cause more grief as people may change their mind or lose the invite - it's hard to confirm attendance if it's too far in advance (even tho I am a planner and WOULD LOVE THAT LOL). The facebook group has the website information and the hotel information for our guests and it's been pretty successful as many have already booked their room.

We were kind of in the same situation, also getting married June 2022. We ended up doing electronic save the dates and just sent them out about a week ago. We wanted to save money on this aspect but still wanted to send something out so people knew in advance of the formal invitations. The electronic save the date has worked out well, we just send it via text, Facebook message, etc. I'd highly recommend. I spent I think about $5 on a template from Etsy that you can then edit and customize. You could also completely DIY it and use Canva or another similar program to create the save the date image, but I thought spending like $5 was a great deal.

I think its better to not send STD's than to send your invitations too early. We just did a FB post to let eveyone know the date.

I just put the date and location on one of our engagement photos and emailed them to our guests so it didn’t cost me anything other than time! I wasn’t originally going to do Save the Dates but given at least half of our guests are overseas and the fact that a lot of events are getting pushed to 2022 I thought it best to give them a formal heads up on our date

We sent out email STD this month (getting married next May). We're planning to send out our invites around July/August since we have a lot of out of country relatives we're inviting! My friend who's getting married next October only sent out invites and sent them out really early since she's getting married in Ireland. Totally up to you though! I think it's nice to send them out a bit early, since they might be attending other weddings as well. Said friend has 4 + her own wedding to attend next year!

Save the Date isn't as crucial as the main invites to send. Out of town family and guest would be suggestable to have them ahead of time given if there is any changes, the website will be updated for further information. They would need time to make plans for travel and visa if needed and hotel when the invite is sent.

It's totally up to you and your FH if you guys want to send save the dates or not. My fiance and I did with our first wedding date since we're getting married in a different province and we wanted everyone to know so that they could get hotels and such. It's only cost us around $20 dollars to send them out. We had used a box set of wedding invites from Michaels and made them as save the dates instead. Everyone is different and not everyone sends out saves the date. If you don't want to, then I would say maybe send out your invites to your gets a little bit earlier then normal maybe 4-5 months before just so they know they might need to get accommodations in order

I'm going to do email save the dates around 9 months out and send my invites in the mail around 3 months out. Just nice to give people some extra notice but I don't want to spend extra money on save the dates either!

I agree with Christiana. STDs aren't necessary in every circumstance, but are definitely helpful for those guests that are from out of town and will need more time to make travel arrangements. Sending out invitations too early also has some drawbacks for the very reason Christiana said.
FH and I went the virtual route with our save the dates so that there was no additional cost, and we did them in the first place because our original date was in the summer so we wanted to make sure that people knew the date so they could plan summer vacations accordingly, and we also had some guests that are from Europe (then covid happened😓). But I made the STDs myself so it was completely our own design and felt more personal which I loved. We just had to make sure some of the older guests got them ok since we knew some aren't the most tech savvy. But it was definitely the way to go for us, and we printed a couple for a keepsake box.

I sent out an email to all of our guests with our save the date attached as an image. Saved us on paper and postage costs. This was sent out a year before our wedding date to give the international guests time to book flights for our day. We then sent out invites 2-3 months before.

Save the dates are absolutely not necessary but some people enjoy sending or receiving them. Others think you can "call dibs" on guests if they have a competing wedding. But honestly if I was invited to two weddings on the same day I'm going to the one I want to go to, not whichever I knew about first.

If you're not sending them I would just make sure you give guests a few months notice - so maybe aim for 12-16 weeks before the wedding to have them out. But digital STDs could also work! You don't need to give any information other than the date so the invitation won't be redundant.

Edit: I would avoid sending out invites too early. People will forget about them because they're not going to want to RSVP 6 months or a year before the date and you'll be chasing after people to find out whether they're coming.