Wedding Planning 101: Save The Dates, Invitations, & Building Your Registry

Welcome back to Wedding Planning 101! So far, you have built your guest list, found a venue, booked your vendors, and maybe even found your dress! Now it’s time to officially start inviting your friends and family to celebrate your special day! I definitely had a lot of questions surrounding this topic so I hope this post can help you if you are finding yourself in the same boat!

Save the Dates

When it comes to “Save the Dates”, I know there are a lot of mixed opinions on whether or not they are truly necessary. I can definitely see both sides of the argument, but let’s be real…they are so fun to design! Most of our guests were local to the area, but we decided to send them out anyway! When you google save the dates or wedding invitations, you will find a host of different websites where you can order them. I have even seen people design their own on Canva! As I mentioned in my last post, the picture of the floral bouquet I found on Pinterest informed a lot of the decorative and aesthetic decisions I made about our wedding! In our case, I just so happened to be scrolling on The Knot and found save the dates and matching invitations with the same floral arrangement as that photo – how perfect?! I opted for the postcard since it was a little bit cheaper, and would also save us money in postage. (I later learned that postcard stamps are cheaper than traditional ones which was a win-win!)

Timing

Once you have your save the dates and/or invitations picked out, when are you actually supposed to send them? I did a lot of research on this and found some conflicting answers. Some resources suggested 8-10 months in advance, some left it up to the individual’s discretion. In our case, I knew that most of our guests already knew when the wedding was, and I also wanted to avoid the hectic holiday mail season. I ended up sending our Save the Dates in February which was roughly six months in advance. We sent our invitations 3 months later and set our RSVP date 1 month before the wedding which would give us plenty of time to check in with any guests who we hadn’t heard from. It is very popular these days to use an QR code RSVP, but we personally opted for the enclosure card. While you will end up spending extra money on stamps, it is worth it! I felt it was more formal and incentivized our guests to respond sooner since it needed to be mailed back to us. Ultimately, the timing is up to you but we found that this system worked well for us!

Building Your Registry

Once I had our Save the Dates mailed, I started working on our registry! I know a lot of people struggle with thinking of things to add. In a way, it feels weird to add a bunch of things to a list and “asking” your guests to buy things for you. However, your friends and family love you and want to help you get started! Plus, I think it is safe to say that most people would much rather gift you something that you actually want and will use on a regular basis. What you ultimately add to your registry, if you choose to have one, will largely depend on your personal needs. For us, we were starting from scratch. I was living at home and my husband was living in the barracks on base. I never had an off campus college apartment and neither one of us had the basic kitchen necessities or really anything for a new home! Because of this, I wanted to keep our registry very practical and made sure that I covered all of the basics – dinnerware sets, flatware, vacuum, kitchen utensils & appliances, and a few decorative items just to name a few! I did promise you all a Wedding Registry Favorites video on YouTube and I plan to film that very soon! I’m hoping that will give you a little bit more detail and maybe some inspiration for your own registry! I ended up creating registries on Target, Amazon, and Crate & Barrel. I was able to sync all of the sites to The Knot so our guests could shop from one place. It was very user friendly and I would definitely recommend!

Thank you so much for reading!