When to send save the dates
Written by the Wedvite founders
Send save the dates six to nine months before a local wedding, and nine to twelve months before a destination wedding. Send as soon as the date and the city are certain — the venue does not have to be booked. They carry your names and the date, and almost nothing else.
How far ahead should you send save the dates?
Six to nine months is the working answer for a wedding people can drive to. Nine to twelve months is the answer when guests have to fly, when the date falls on a public-holiday weekend, or when a large part of the list will be booking annual leave months in advance. Twelve months is the sensible ceiling for almost everyone.
The number matters less than the trigger, which is certainty. A save the date is a commitment: guests will book flights and block a weekend around it, so send it when the date can no longer move — not when the planning feels exciting. Two months of extra notice is worth far less than never having to send the message that the date has changed.
Sending nine months out and sending six months out are both normal, and neither is a mistake. The only genuine error is sending so late that the save the date and the invitation arrive in the same season; if you are inside about four months, skip it and go straight to the invitation, which is covered on when to send wedding invitations.
Save the dates for a destination wedding
A destination wedding needs the full twelve months, and it needs them for a reason your guests will feel in their bank account. Fares are usually lower and there is more choice when guests book early, hotel blocks release their rooms long before the wedding, and in many workplaces the popular weeks of annual leave go early, to whoever asks first.
A destination save the date also does slightly more work than a local one. Alongside the names, the date and the location, it helps to say the shape of the trip: whether guests should plan for a weekend or a week, whether there is a welcome dinner the night before, and roughly what the travel will cost. None of that is a commitment — it is the information a guest needs to decide honestly, early, while declining is still easy.
Then keep the details for the invitation, which goes out about three months before. If you are weighing how much to put in each, the sequence on when to send digital wedding invitations covers the second half of the timeline, including how late is too late.
What a save the date has to carry
Less than couples expect. A save the date has one job — put the date in the diary — and every extra line makes that job harder. The complete list:
- Both first names, in the form you will use on the invitation, so the two announcements read as one wedding.
- The date, written out in full, with the day of the week — it is the fact that has to survive a year on a fridge door.
- The city or region. That is enough — guests are booking travel, not a venue — and the venue name is optional if you already have it.
- One line saying the invitation will follow. It stops the two most common questions before they are asked.
What stays off: the dress code, the RSVP, accommodation lists and gift wishes. All of it belongs on the invitation, and all of it can still change. A ceremony time is optional too — include it only if it is already settled. For the exact phrasing, including how to word it when parents are hosting or the date is a weekday, save the date wording has examples you can copy.
A digital save the date adds one thing paper cannot: an add-to-calendar button, so the date lands in a guest phone instead of on a fridge. Ours is one link — your names and the date full screen, with a quiet strip below for the time and the venue, where one tap opens the map — at $19 paid once, hosted through your wedding date and at least 90 days after. The full invitation is $89, and upgrading later costs the difference between the two rather than a second full price. See digital save the dates for the designs.
What to do when the venue is not booked yet
Send anyway, if the date is fixed. This is the situation that stalls most couples, and it rests on a misunderstanding: guests are not booking a venue, they are booking a weekend. A date and a city are enough for every decision they have to make now — leave, flights, childcare — and the venue name changes nothing about any of them.
The test is simple. If the date could still move, wait. If the date is certain and only the venue, the catering or the ceremony time is open, send the save the date with the city and hold the rest for the invitation. A save the date that names no venue is completely normal; a wedding whose date changes after the announcement is the thing guests remember.
The same logic applies to a date you are holding provisionally with a registrar or a church. Get the date confirmed in writing, then announce it. And if you sent a save the date and something does change, tell people directly rather than hoping they have not booked — a digital save the date at least lets you correct the page itself, so the version guests re-open is the right one.
Who gets a save the date
Only people who are definitely invited. A save the date cannot be taken back, so everyone who receives one must receive an invitation, and that makes it the moment your guest list stops being a draft. Settle the numbers with whoever is paying before you send a single one.
That rules out two common mistakes. Do not send save the dates to a B-list you plan to promote later if declines come in — the invitation stage is where that happens quietly. And do not send them to anyone you have not decided about, however awkward the conversation feels now; it is far more awkward in month eight.
Address them the way you will address the invitation, including plus-ones and children, so nobody arrives at the invitation with a different expectation. If you are unsure how to phrase that, how to address wedding invitations covers the same rules for both.
A save the date your guests can tap into their calendar
One link: an animated envelope, your names and the date full screen, a quiet strip for the time and the venue — one tap opens the map — and an add-to-calendar button. $19 paid once, sent by WhatsApp, text or email, with no app for guests.
The save the date is built in the studio portfolio designs — open digital save the dates to see the full set live before you pick one.
Save the date timing questions
How far in advance should you send save the dates?+
Is it too early to send save the dates a year out?+
Do you have to send save the dates at all?+
What information goes on a save the date?+
Can you send save the dates before booking the venue?+
Claim the date this week.
Pick a design, type your names and the date, and send it today. $19 paid once — the full invitation follows later.
Start your save the date