Wedding Wednesday: Save-the-Dates

If you've been invited to a wedding in the past five years, chances are you received a pre-invitation, called a save-the-date, months before getting the actual wedding invitation. As a bride-to-be, you may be unsure whether or not this newer tradition is really a necessary expense. In my (totally unprofessional) opinion, there are only a few circumstances where sending a save-the-date would be important. If you are having your wedding over a holiday weekend (around July 4th, around Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve, etc), sending out a save-the-date ensures that your guests have as much time as possible to prepare for the event, since they may normally have other plans during those times. Additionally, if you are having a destination wedding, or even just if many of your guests will need to fly in order to attend your wedding, sending them a save-the-date allows them ample time to shop around for airfare and hopefully find a good price to ease their burden of travel.

However, even in those circumstances, a save-the-date can still be bypassed, and information about your wedding date/location can be shared via word of mouth, email, or other social media outlets. Of course, sending a save-the-date tells the person that they will definitely be receiving a formal invitation later; a generic Facebook or Twitter post does not indicate to people who read it whether or not they will be invited.

That being said, many brides still opt to send save-the-dates, even if their wedding doesn't fall into one of the above situations, because they can be a fun way to get people excited for the wedding (having a magnet on your fridge is certainly a frequent reminder of the event), plus they allow the bride and groom to get a little bit more creative with the presentation than they may be comfortable doing on the formal invitation.

A save-the-date allows couples to showcase their wedding location,

to share some information about their love story,

to showcase their passions (and possibly the theme for the wedding),

and of course, it's a great way to share some of your gorgeous engagement pictures.

If the budget is tight, save-the-dates are an easy place to cut expenses (rather than a photographer or caterer, for example), since by the time they are designed, printed, and mailed the cost can get pretty high. However, they are a good way to share some of the important details of your wedding day and get people excited for the event, so the final decision is up to you!


All images found at Style Me Pretty.