When To Send Your Save The Date!

“When do you send out a Save The Date?” Our Special Moments Event Planning team gets this question all the time.

While the easy answer is As Soon As Possible! It’s a little more complicated than that.

Three Easy Steps

To make this as basic as possible, you’ll need to know three things before sending out a Save The Date.

1. Your wedding date
2. The location of your wedding
3. Your guest list

If that sounds too easy, then you are right. Those are the three things you need to know. But, there are several steps to get to those answers.

Picking A Wedding Date

Yes, before you can ask someone to Save The Date, you actually have to have a date. And that takes a little work.

Before picking a date, you’ll need to look at your personal and close family schedules. You’ll also want to decide if you want a beach wedding or something that is indoors.

In Florida, we look at things like spring break, hurricane season, and how hot our summers get. Planning around spring break and other prominent local events can be a huge part of picking the right date.

Picking A Location

Picking a wedding location goes hand in hand with choosing a date. Knowing the dates you are considering, the type of wedding you want, and even how large of a wedding all come into play.

Beyond the season and style of wedding, you are considering you’ll need to decide on your wedding budget. It’s impossible to pick the right wedding venue without knowing whether it works with your budget.

The typical wedding reception, including food and beverage and tax and service charges, can make up 48-52% of a wedding’s total budget. So, you want to have those serious financial discussions and create a realistic budget before booking your wedding location.

You’ll Need A Guest List

Obviously, if you send out Save The Dates, you’ll need to know who you are sending them to. But it’s more involved than that!

You can’t really pick a wedding venue large enough for all of your wedding guests if you don’t have a guest list. And the number of guests you invite drives EVERYTHING from the number Save The Dates and invitations you’ll need to order. As well as how many centerpieces and slices of wedding cake.

As important as all those things are, here’s the reality check. You don’t want to send out a Save the Date to someone who doesn’t make the cut for your guest list later on!

Securing Guest Rooms

It’s always a good idea to secure a room block for your wedding guests. Guests looking to Save The Date might need to consider travel and hotel expenses before RSVPing to your wedding.

If you are doing a destination wedding, it’s practically a must. Many of your guests will want to roll a wedding weekend into a vacation. Even if everyone is local, guests are reluctant to celebrate and then drive home.

If you are hosting your wedding at a hotel or venue with rooms, you might also want to look at other hotel options at a few different price points. Your guest list will determine this and how many rooms you might want to put on hold.

Creating A Wedding Website

While a wedding website is not a Must Have, it can be fun and informative. Sharing a link on your Save The Date allows you to share a lot of information on room blocks and local things to do.

Down the road, you can add more about your story as a couple, people in your wedding party, and even events like a welcome reception or brunch the day after your wedding.

The good news is that many wedding portals offer free wedding websites that are customizable and easy to update with new information.

When Do We Send Out Our Wedding Invitations?

Now that we’ve tackled when to send out Save The Dates. Check back for our upcoming blog post on when to send out wedding invitations!