When Should You Order and Send Save the Dates and Wedding Invitations?


Timings can differ slightly between suppliers as it can depend on what type of stationery you are having - house collections, bespoke, digital printed etc.

For my couples, I recommend enquiring about your Saves the Dates or Wedding Invitations a minimum of 3 months before you would like to send them out to your guests, as the design process can take up to 3 months to complete from initial enquiry to delivery.

I aim to deliver your invitations around a week before you would like to send them out. This gives you time if you have opted to address your invitations or Save the Date envelopes yourself.

For destination weddings, you should take into consideration that your guests will most probably need to book time off work, book flights, hotels and possibly make childcare arrangements for when they are away. This is particularly true for wedding weekends or week-long celebrations.

When should you order and send your Wedding Invitations?

Typically, wedding invitations are sent out around 3 months before your wedding, which means you should enquire with me a minimum of 6 months before your wedding.

What to do if you’re under time pressure.

I realise that not everyone has the luxury of having 12 months to plan a wedding, and a wedding can definitely be planned in much less time! However, bespoke stationery is a time investment. Not for yourself, but in the time it takes to produce, so it’s worth taking that into consideration if bespoke stationery is high on your wish list for your wedding.

If you have less than 3 months until you need to send your wedding stationery out, we do offer rush order rates. Rush orders will be subject to capacity in the studio and print supplier schedule and are charged at a premium rate per item.

If you’d like to get in touch about a rush order, please enquire now.

What information do you need to know about your wedding before enquiring about your stationery?

Whilst it’s not absolutely necessary that you have all the details of your wedding finalised before enquiring about your wedding stationery it can help to have the following few details nailed down:

• Your wedding venue
• Your wedding date
• Your shortlist of colour schemes or wedding theme choices that you have in mind
• A guest list estimate

Your wedding date gives us a date to work back from in order to establish production timelines for your stationery, whilst a rough estimate of your guest list size allows me to provide a more accurate quote for you, and again helps establish production and assembly timelines.

If you decide to go ahead and book a free design consultation with me, I will provide you with a client questionnaire that will ask for as many of these details as you can provide. I’ll also ask for as many details as you can provide about your various wedding suppliers, as this helps me get an overall feel for what type of wedding you’ll be having, and the overall aesthetic that we’re working towards with your stationery.