When to send wedding invitations
Written by the Wedvite founders
Send wedding invitations six to eight weeks before the wedding, or about twelve weeks before a destination wedding. Send save the dates six to twelve months ahead, make RSVPs due three to four weeks before the day, and give the caterer final numbers one to two weeks before.
The wedding invitation timeline, week by week
Four dates decide the whole schedule: the save the date, the invitation, the reply deadline and the headcount your caterer needs. Read the row for the wedding you are having.
| Milestone | Local wedding | Destination wedding | Digital send |
|---|---|---|---|
| Save the date | 26–39 weeks before (6–9 months) | 39–52 weeks before (9–12 months) | Same window — delivered the day you publish it |
| Wedding invitations | 6–8 weeks before | About 12 weeks before (3 months) | 6–8 weeks before, with no printing or post to allow for |
| RSVP deadline | 3–4 weeks before | 6–8 weeks before | 3–4 weeks before; replies land as guests tap |
| Final numbers to the caterer | 1–2 weeks before | 2–3 weeks before | 1–2 weeks before, counted off the RSVP dashboard |
Work the table backwards from the wedding date rather than forwards from today. Ask your venue when it needs final numbers, put the RSVP deadline one to two weeks before that, and count three to four weeks back from the deadline for the send. Wedding minus three or four weeks is the deadline; the deadline minus another three or four is the send, which lands on the six-to-eight-week window in the table. Do it in that order and the invitation date falls out of the arithmetic instead of being guessed. The RSVP deadline calculator takes your wedding date and the day your venue needs final numbers, and returns a send date, a reminder date and the reply deadline. Its send date is fixed at ten weeks out, which is the cautious end of the window — move it in towards six weeks if the wedding is local and everyone has had a save the date. To run this whole table from the wedding date instead, and see which windows are still open today, use the wedding invitation timeline calculator.
How far in advance should you send wedding invitations?
Six to eight weeks. It is the answer almost every planner gives, and the reasoning behind it is more useful than the number. Guests need long enough to arrange the three things that stop people coming — time off, travel and childcare — but not so long that the invitation goes on a shelf and is forgotten. Six to eight weeks clears the first and avoids the second.
Push towards eight weeks, or past it, when several of these are true: a lot of guests are travelling, the wedding falls on a public holiday or in peak summer, you did not send a save the date, or the guest list has families who need to arrange childcare. Pull back towards six weeks when the wedding is local, the list is small and everyone has had a save the date for months.
Below six weeks you are not doomed, you are just asking a favour. Send as soon as you can, say plainly that the notice is short, and follow up personally with the people you most want there. If you are sending a link rather than a printed card, the practical floor is lower again, because nothing is waiting on a printer or the post — that case has its own page: when to send digital wedding invitations.
One thing goes out after this one, not before it. If you are hosting a dinner the night before, its invitation follows the wedding suite by a few weeks — a guest who gets the dinner invitation first assumes the wedding one was lost in the post. Rehearsal dinner invitations covers that order, who is on the shorter list, and eight wordings for the evening.
When to send if you skipped the save the date
Plenty of couples skip the save the date, and it is not a problem in itself. What it changes is the notice your invitation has to carry on its own. Without an earlier announcement, the invitation is the first your guests have heard of the date, so give it more room: three months is a sensible target, and ten to twelve weeks is the shortest window that still feels like notice rather than an ambush.
Two groups deserve a phone call before anything is sent, whether or not you sent save the dates: the people whose absence would change the day, and anyone who has to fly. A two-minute call months ahead does what a card cannot, and it costs you nothing to say the invitation is coming.
If the date is already inside three months and no save the date went out, send the invitation now rather than waiting for a tidier moment, and put the RSVP deadline a clear three weeks before the day so you are not chasing replies in the final fortnight. A save the date is worth sending even now if the wedding is more than four months away — see when to send save the dates for the cut-off.
Destination weddings and out-of-town guests
A destination wedding runs on a longer clock because your guests are buying flights, not just a card for the gift table. Send the save the date nine to twelve months out, the invitation about twelve weeks before the day, and set the reply deadline six to eight weeks before, so that anyone who declines does it while their money is still their own.
The same stretch applies to a local wedding with a lot of out-of-town guests. If a third of your list is flying in for a weekend, plan for them and let the local guests enjoy the extra notice. Practical things worth including early, whether or not the invitation carries them:
- The nearest airport and the travel time from it to the venue, so nobody books a flight that lands two hours after the ceremony.
- Accommodation options at two price points, with any room block and the date it is released.
- The shape of the weekend — whether there is a welcome dinner on the Friday and something on the Sunday — because it decides how many nights they book.
- Anything seasonal that affects travel: a local festival, a public holiday, or the week the ferries stop running.
A digital invitation carries all of that without a second insert card, and it can be corrected after it is sent, which matters when a hotel changes its rates in month nine. See digital wedding invitations for how the page is built.
Setting the RSVP deadline
The reply deadline is the one date on this page that is not a convention. It is arithmetic, and it starts at the other end. Ask your caterer or venue coordinator when they need final numbers — most want them one to two weeks before the wedding — then put the RSVP deadline one to two weeks before that. Three to four weeks before the day is where that usually lands.
For a local wedding, resist the urge to set it earlier than four weeks — a destination wedding is the exception and belongs at six to eight. An early deadline does not make people reply earlier; it just means the replies you chase are the same ones, a fortnight sooner, and it gives late-declining guests more time to change their minds. What genuinely helps is making the reply take seconds: one tap, one link, no card to post and no stamp to find.
Expect to chase, twice. A chunk of the list will go quiet before the deadline — that is normal, not rude — so send one short, warm nudge to the people who have not answered about a week before the reply-by date, and a second a week after it for the stragglers. The first is the one that moves most of the list; the second is for the handful who were always going to need asking. Our RSVP deadline calculator takes your wedding date and how many days before it your venue needs final numbers, and gives you a send date, a reminder date and the reply deadline. If you would rather see how the reply itself is collected, read wedding invitations with RSVP.
Digital vs printed timing
The six-to-eight-week rule was written for paper. It quietly includes a fortnight of production — proofing, printing, addressing, stuffing, posting — and a week of delivery, and it has no mechanism for a mistake. Once the envelopes are in the post, an error is a reprint or a correction card.
A link changes three things about the schedule, and only three. It arrives the moment you publish it, so the production fortnight disappears. It can be edited afterwards on the same address, so a moved ceremony time is a correction rather than a second mailing. And the replies arrive in a dashboard as guests tap, so you can check them against your own list while the deadline is still ahead of you.
What it does not change is the courtesy. Guests still need six to eight weeks of notice to book leave, and they still make up their minds within a few days of reading the invitation. The rule stays; the penalty for missing it by a week is what softens. Wedvite invitations are $89 paid once for unlimited guests, sent as one link by WhatsApp, text or email, hosted through your wedding date and at least 90 days after, with a save-the-date-only version at $19. There is no per-recipient sending inside the product and no read receipts: you share the link yourself, and the RSVP dashboard is how you know who has replied.
If you are weighing the two formats rather than the two schedules, digital versus paper wedding invitations compares cost, etiquette and reply rates, and how to send wedding invitations online covers the sending itself.
When to mail wedding invitations in the US
US practice follows the table above with two local habits worth knowing. The first is that the invitation suite is usually mailed six to eight weeks out and the RSVP card is expected back three to four weeks before the day, which is exactly the window a caterer needs for a plated dinner with entrée choices.
The second is the save the date, which is close to standard rather than optional: six to nine months for a local wedding, nine to twelve for a destination one, and earlier still for a holiday-weekend date when everyone is competing for the same flights. On a printed US suite the accommodation, the schedule and the directions usually live on a separate wedding website, linked from both the save the date and the invitation; a digital invitation carries all of that on the page itself, so there is nothing to link out to.
Two US-specific timing traps. Thanksgiving and the winter holidays swallow a mailing — send before the first week of December or after the New Year, not in between. And if you are mailing, allow for postage: an over-sized or square envelope costs more and is more likely to be delayed, which is time you have already spent. For wording conventions on the US suite, see the wedding invitation wording guide, and for addressing, how to address wedding invitations.
When to send wedding invites in the UK
UK timing is the same six-to-eight-week rule with one structural difference: the evening invitation. Many UK weddings invite one group to the ceremony and wedding breakfast and a second, larger group to the evening reception, and the two go out together, six to eight weeks before, so that nobody hears about the day from somebody else first.
A few other British conventions change the schedule at the edges. Save the dates are common but less universal than in the US, so the invitation often carries more of the notice on its own. Bank-holiday weekends in May and August book out early, which argues for a longer lead. And if the ceremony is in a church, the reading of banns sets its own calendar with the parish, which is a separate clock from the invitation one.
One practical note for UK couples who are sending a link: ask for a phone number as well as an email when you collect replies. A large share of UK guests will open the invitation in WhatsApp, and a number is how you chase a missing reply without a second email that goes unread. See WhatsApp wedding invitations.
What a Wedvite invitation includes
$89 paid once, unlimited guests, RSVP included. One link, delivered by WhatsApp, text or email, and still editable on the same address after you send it — which is what makes the timeline above forgiving.
One flat price
Pay once, whether you invite forty guests or four hundred. There is no per-guest charge and no subscription to cancel afterwards.
One link, sent your way
Share it by WhatsApp, text or email, from your own phone. Guests tap it open in the browser they already have — there is no app to install.
A catalog of more than 30 designs
Each one opens with an animated envelope and a full-screen hero, and every word is editable before you pay.
Offered in 11 languages
Typography is tuned per language, including right-to-left scripts such as Arabic. Your first language is included; further languages are a small fee each, shown in the editor.
RSVP and guest messages
Guests reply on the invitation itself. Every answer and message lands in a dashboard you can open at any point — there are no read receipts, so it shows who replied, not who looked.
Edit after sending
A moved ceremony time or a new venue is one edit on the same link, seen by everyone who already has it. The page stays hosted through your wedding date and at least 90 days after, and you can design it all and share it with your first 10 guests before you pay.
The current catalog spans more than 30 designs — from Toscana's vineyards and Santorini's blue domes to Sakura, Deco, Provence, Royal, Imperial, Aurora's northern lights and a full Gulf collection — every one editable word-by-word before you pay.
Wedding invitation timing questions
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