Save the Date!

Now comes one of the most exciting parts because here is where it all starts to feel a bit more real. You’ve secured the venue, and the date, so it’s time to tell people about it and start building the excitement!

You can send out your save the date whenever you want. There are no hard and fast rules about when you’re supposed to send them out, it all varies depending on how long your engagement period is. For Ronan and I, once we had enjoyed being engaged, we went on to book our wedding venue which was 12 months before the wedding date. Consequently, we decided to send save the dates out 10 months before the wedding, which we felt was just the right amount of time considering we wanted formal invites out in August. You’d be surprised at how quick peoples’ diaries start filling up!

If you’ve got a much shorter period of time, say 6 months, you might want to get them out ASAP to give people enough time, and so that you’re not only sending the formal invites too close to the big day. Of course, it’s not compulsory to send out save the dates at all especially in this case, just send the formal invites slightly earlier than what is customary; people tend to send out formal invites around 8 – 12 weeks before the big day. But it is a nice way of building up the excitement, which is exactly what me and Ronan wanted to do! If you’re not getting married for another 3 years, then you should probably send out save the dates at least 10 – 12 months before the date, and give even longer for destination weddings so people can book tickets/accommodation well in advance. They might even want to plan an entire holiday around your wedding! Who knows!

3 bits of key info to include

1. Location – but not the exact location like the venue or church, just perhaps the city. Remember, you want to keep your guests intrigued and excited by releasing just enough information without giving too much away in one go!

2. The date – this goes without saying; you are, after all, asking people to save your date in their diaries!

3. Finally, let people know that formal invitations will follow at some point in the future.

Don’t stress over the design

At this point, some of you may already have a theme in mind, or you may have had a theme in mind since you were a little girl. If you do, that’s great and you can design a save the date that fits in with your theme. If not, don’t worry, neither did we! In fact, I simply chose a design that I thought looked cool, and we later on incorporated it into our overall theme. So, you don’t necessarily have to have it all figured out before you start, sometimes it is better to just go with the flow and things do start to fall into place. Trust me, it’s a tiny hack that can help lift a huge stress off your shoulders at a time where you will be getting stressed from time to time! In fact, your save the date will automatically scream "you" to others without you even realising it, because your choice is likely to reflect the aesthetics that you are in to.

Pinterest = life saver!

But with things like Pinterest these days, your experience can be far from stressful. And just like every other bride out there, Pinterest was my go-to for EVERYTHING. From having no clue at all, you can come up with a great idea or two or three, in seconds and that’s a good starting point. Of course, making the decision about which one to go with is another question. But once you do know what design you want, have a think about whether you want to pay a supplier to make them for you, or DIY them yourself! Follow my Pinterest link to view my Wedding Board and see some of the inspiration that lead me to design my own save the date. I decided to DIY it because firstly, I wanted to design and create it myself - there’s nothing more special than adding your own personal touch, and secondly, we wanted to spend more on the formal invites so this was a great way to cut down some costs.

Read this post to find out how I DIYed my own save the dates.

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