Save the Dates are the first paper element of celebrating and announcing your engagement.

These should be fun and exciting. Your Save the Dates can be more fun and playful than the formalities that your wedding invitation suite will have.

Couples will often use one of their engagement photos taken by their photographer. These photos are high resolution and higher quality than a photo from your phone. If your engagement session is coming up and you know you want to use an engagement photo for your Save the Date, then contact your photographer to see if you can get 4 to 5 sneak peek photos, preferably in landscape orientation as they are easier to insert text and/or design on.

If you choose not to use an engagement photo there are a wide variety of Save the Date options that are fun and colorful for any personality. You do want your Save the Date to reflect the personality of both you and your partner, but they do not have to match what your wedding invitation suite will look like. Some couples like to pick a design that will match the wedding invitation suite, but there is no etiquette that defines one choice as being wrong, it is a completely personal preference.

Your Save the Dates should be mailed out about 6 to 8 months before your wedding to give your guests notice to plan for travel and accommodations. If your wedding website has already been created you will want to include that information on your save the dates. If you haven’t created it yet, then you can include it on your detail cards later. It is most helpful for your guests if you have your wedding website up and running with all of the extra details by the time your Save the Dates are mailed out.

The main components you will want to include on your Save the Dates are your names, wedding date, location, and wedding website. You do not need to put your last names on your Save the Date, as most of your guests will know who it is, especially if you are using an engagement photo as your save the date background.

This is a wonderful time to gather your guest addresses and put them in a spreadsheet. It will keep you more organized to do this before you order your Save the Dates, and ensure that they
are completed by the time you are ready to mail out your wedding invitations. Every Stationer is different, so it is a good idea to ask which format your Stationer prefers, for example, Excel, Word, etc… For Love Notes Stationery, we require addresses to be in excel with the following individual columns: “First Name and Last Name”; “Street Address”; “City”; “State”; “Zip Code”. This allows us to better manipulate the excel file you send to keep everything uniformly formatted.

Save the Dates are the first paper element in your process, so have fun, and congratulations!