Digital save the dates

Five things, and it is worth being strict about the list. Anything else belongs on the invitation, which is still months away and will almost certainly change.

• ✦Both your names, the way you want them said out loud.
• ✦The wedding date. If only the month is fixed, say the month and add a line promising the exact date to follow.
• ✦The city, or the country for a destination wedding — enough for a guest to price a flight.
• ✦The words "invitation to follow", so nobody waits for details that are not coming yet.
• ✦A way to save the day: on a digital save the date, that is the add-to-calendar control rather than a fridge magnet.

What to leave off is just as useful. No RSVP — you are not ready to count, and an early yes is worth nothing when the guest list is still moving. No dress code, no schedule, no accommodation block, no registry. On Wedvite those are not decisions you have to resist: the save-the-date product does not render them at all, so the page cannot quietly turn into a half-finished invitation.

The venue line is optional and often the honest thing to leave blank. If the contract is not signed, put the city in and change it later — the link is live and editable, so every guest who already saved it sees the update without you re-sending anything. If you want the full checklist of what eventually goes on the invitation itself, what to include on a wedding website covers it section by section.

Six to nine months before the wedding is the ordinary answer, and nine to twelve months is the right one if guests will need flights, a passport or a hotel over a holiday weekend. Send earlier than twelve months and people forget; send later than four and the save the date has stopped being useful, because you will be sending the invitation soon afterwards.

Digital changes the arithmetic at the late end rather than the early end. A printed save the date has to be designed, proofed, printed and posted, so the decision is made weeks before the card lands. A link is live the moment you publish it, which means a date fixed on a Tuesday can be in your guests' calendars on the Tuesday. That is the one real advantage of the format, and it is worth spending on a short list rather than a long one.

The other rule that catches couples out: everyone who gets a save the date must get an invitation. It is a promise, not a poll. Count the list before you send. When to send save the dates works through the timings month by month, including destination weddings and the case where you skip the save the date altogether, and when to send wedding invitations picks the story up at the invitation.

The save the date and the invitation are the same link. When your details are settled, that page stops being a hero-only announcement and turns into the full invitation — the schedule, the venue with its map, the live RSVP with a guest-messages dashboard, the photo gallery, your story and background music — at the same address every guest already saved.

You pay the difference between the two list prices, not the invitation price a second time: that is $70. The policy itself has no expiry — the amount simply follows whatever the invitation costs on the day you upgrade.

Be clear about how it happens, because there is no button for it yet. Message us on Instagram — the handle and your order number are both in your receipt — and we move your invitation across by hand and send you the payment link for the difference. A person does it, so it is not instant. We would rather say that than put a one-click promise on a page and make you find out otherwise.

Two details worth knowing. Your guests keep the address they saved, so nobody needs a second link, and the calendar entries they already created stay pointing at the same page. And everything you typed into the save the date — names, date, time, venue — is already there when the invitation opens, so you are adding sections rather than starting again. Invitations with RSVP built in shows what the RSVP side looks like once it is switched on.

You send it yourself, which is simpler than it sounds. Publishing gives you one link. Paste it into a WhatsApp group, a text, an Instagram message or an email, and it unfurls into a preview card showing your design's envelope rather than arriving as a bare address. There is no guest list to upload here, nobody's phone number to collect, and no per-recipient fee waiting at the end of it.

Two consequences of that, one good and one worth planning for. The good one: the link works everywhere at once, so a family group chat does the distribution for you. The one to plan for: because we do not send on your behalf, nothing on our side tells you who opened it. If knowing that matters to you, a save the date is the wrong tool — the RSVP on the full invitation is the thing that actually reports back.

Sending wedding invitations over WhatsApp covers the practicalities — group etiquette, what the preview card looks like, and reaching guests who never open email.

An online save the date is a page with its own web address, which is what separates it from an image file. Because the page is live, you can change it after sending: a new venue or a later time shows to every guest the next time they open the link, without sending anything again (calendar entries guests already saved keep the old details, so tell them if the time moves). You share that one link yourself, by WhatsApp, text, Instagram or email. When the details are settled, the same link becomes your full invitation and you pay the difference between the two prices.