Save the Dates: Necessary or Not?

We only have a 7 month engagement so we sent the invitations at the end of December (wedding is end of April) so people coming from other provinces/countries could plan and book accordingly.

Yes. We have many guests travelling in for this if not by plane, then a long car ride. We wanted to make sure nobody can say they didn't have enough time to plan.

Necessary for us since we have so many OOT guests that we want to be there. We've had some guests from Las Vegas who already told us they booked their flight!

For me, they are necessary. Our engagement is close to a year long and almost all of our guests are flying in from out of town.

Save the dates allowed for holiday picks at work to align with the date, allows guests to wait for seat sales to book flights and lets guests find suitable accommodations without any pressure to book right away.

Not necessary for shorter engagements. Necessary for sure if you’ll have a lot of people travelling in. We have just under 8 months between the date we got engaged and the date we’ll get married so it seemed excessive to send save the dates. We will however send out invites a little earlier than normal.

Necessary for sure. Even if you just Go with an email version, but some guests need a lot of notice to make travel plans.

Depends. I don't think it's necessary to pay for Save the Dates... in this technological age, you can do an image StD and send it electronically.

It's 100% necessary for destination, and if you have a large portion of guests who need to travel...

I text messaged, e-mailed and Facebook Messenger'd our StD's to everyone, just so if anyone was 'wondering' if they would be invited or not, that question was answered. Also, it stopped many of my family members from booking trips over that weekend.

Not sending save the dates, we’ve spread the word via word of mouth from family members. We’ll be sending out our invites roughly 3-4 months in advance

Not necessary. Initially we wanted to have save the dates but they cost just as much as the invites. Instead we will just be sending invites and saving money by having no save the dates.

Not necessary

Necessary for out of town guests! We had a few that were able to come because they had enough notice.

In the process of sending them. I plan ahead for a lot of stuff myself, so I want to make sure family has that date open so everyone can come!

We sent them early to let everyone know, as most live out of province and we live in a town that gets hit hard with tourism during the summer! Didn't want anyone to miss out on accommodations!

Not, we spread the date through word of mouth and sent out our invitations to those travelling further in advance.

They were necessary for us but we did them electronically.

Depends. Most of my guests live overseas. The save the dates were necessary to make sure they all knew the date well in advance!

Not necessary knowing the family will let others know about your engagement and the wedding date.

I don't think they're necessary
That being said we did send them because everyone is coming from out of town and I got them for practically nothing when I ordered our invites. If I had to pay much I would not have sent them.

Not necessary. even for out of town guests if you tell them someway the date. for our family that lives in another country. we sent them a text or email telling them the wedding date. they were all fine with that.

but along with this...we aren't sending out invites 6 weeks before. we are doing it about 3-4 months before. give people time.

Not necessary, but I am glad we did them. Only cost a little over $100 and it was fun to do!

Necessary! were having such a long engagement (25 months) so we’ll be sending out save the dates a year before the wedding.

Only necessary if you have people travelling a fair distance who may need more notice - students, people who have a hard time getting off work, people with newborns, etc. Or for a destination wedding.

For us, yes. We moved across the country almost a year before the wedding so lots of friends and family were curious about what is happening with the wedding. So our save the dates just helped us let everyone know the wedding was in Ontario still.

Not necessary but we did it just because! Always feel so special when I go to a friends house and they have our photo up on their fridge!

Necessary for out-of-town guests or anyone that needs to book time off work in advance (i.e. nurses, firefighters, police, paramedics, other shift workers).

Out-of town guests would be those that need to reserve accommodations in order to come to the wedding, which is 75% of our guest list so we are sending out Save the Dates. I added shift work/emergency workers since they could be working 3pm on a Saturday when your wedding is - this puts the day into their head so when it comes to time off, they know they should book your day off. Your 9-5 Monday to Friday crowd won't really need them, unless they are out-of-town or your wedding is during the week in that case Save the Dates might be more necessary.

This depends on how many out-of-town guests are invited to the wedding, though I think it’s nice to let all guests know in advance regardless as it gives them more time to save for their attire, the gift, etc.

Not necessary, we just sent out our invites earlier and for the people far out of town we gave them the heads up for the date so they could books flights, etc

I think it depends. We want to have as many people aware of the date in advance as possible so they can celebrate with us.

Itll be july and lots lots of people take holidays so we wanted everyone to have the date in advance.

Not necessary - It's nothing we couldn't share ourselves in person, by phone or via our parents!

I think they're only necessary for the guests that are traveling a long distance. We'll be sending them out to everyone , mostly because I just want to be able to send out one of our engagement photos.

Only necessary IMO if you have guests that have a bit of travel time involved. So it's not necessary for our family that lives 2 hours away but it is for our family that lives 4.5 hours away. You can make a 2 hour trip no problem but a 4.5 hour trip means an overnight.