Congratulations on your engagement. I would definitely send save the date cards if you have many out of town relatives and friends who might attend with advance notice. They don't have to be fancy, a postcard will do.

Just don't do what my daughter did. lol

The wedding will be the end of September, so my daughter thought she had better get the Save the Date cards printed and out quickly. The cards came last week. When she showed them to her fiancee, he didn't like them and said that he never approved the photo she used of the two of them. Now, we are out $100 and they will decide together which photo to use on the next batch.

I could have strangled my daughter. I thought she had asked her fiancee for his opinion.

You should get the date to out of town relatives and close friends, but you don't have to send special save the date cards if you don't want to. E-mail, phone calls, or letters are perfectly fine, especially if you don't have a zillion to do, and a lot cheaper. If you are writing to or calling any of these people anyway, just mention it in that communication.

To me, informal contacts like that are preferable anyway. But save the date cards are common and won't offend any out of towners. The important thing is to get the date to them ASAP. If you do send out cards, I suggest skipping the kind of bossy wording "Save the date!" in favor of something like "We wanted to let you know that we have scheduled our wedding for [date], and we hope so much that you will be able to attend."

Don't send save the date cards to local people who won't have to travel, though. Look through old strings on this forum, and you will see that many people see that as pushy (as in, "I control your calendar; you now have no excuse for planning anything else that day" or "send us an engagement gift"). It's fine to mention your engagement and wedding date when you see or talk to them, though.

If you do send out special save the date cards, be sure to save that list, because of course you must send all those people invitations.

Congratulations!

See, I would send save the date cards to everyone you will be inviting. Local people may talk to out of towners and wonder if they aren't going to be invited. The locals might be planning vacations out of town, they need to know so (hopefully) they won't travel that week. Just say "please". And don't forget to note that invitations will follow (yes, it seems obvious, but some people are not in the know about this stuff).

Just remember, once they go out, that's it. You can't cut the list. If they get a save the date card they MUST be invited.

Save the date cards are great if you will be having guests coming from out of town. We live in a vacation destination area, and the groom's friends and family lived across the country. So we sent out save the dates hoping that more would come maybe by planning their family vacation in August in this area. Several did do that.

The next thing you need to do is book your location, especially if the couple has their hearts set on a certain kind of venue for the wedding and reception. Then go right along and pick those things that are important to you but can do only one booking a day, such as if you want a particular photographer or band. They can only do one gig at a time. The same goes for any particular clergyman. Florists can do more than one wedding a day perhaps.

Invitations can be fit in there when you have time. You need to allow several weeks to two months for the printing, but you should have plenty of time for that.

The wedding dress should also be selected before too long. And that includes mother of the bride and mother of the groom dresses too. Don't postpone them too long. There are so many ugly MOB dresses out there.

I don't even understand what a "MOB/G dress" is supposed to be. I suspect it is just a matronly party dress sold at a bridal salon, so that when brides and their mothers come in to shop for wedding gowns, they get the impression that the MOB and MOG are supposed to shop there, too. But why would the mothers buy their dresses at a bridal salon? They don't have to match anyone else's dress. There is no reason not to shop at regular stores, where the selection (and often the quality) are going to be much, much better.

Gellchom, MOB and MOG dresses are purchased from any store where such a garment can be found. Bridal shops do carry some. So do department stores and boutiques. I call them MOB dresses, as do many of my friends. But that is just a shortcut to describe the fancier than usual outfit most MOBs wear. There certainly is no "uniform," and I was not trying to imply that there is.

congrats...:)

Wait~~:)

I know how to report spam, thanks, sushipup.

Great! I just didn't know why you responded to a spammer. I see you've removed that reply now.

Just so that others more credulous wouldn't be sucked in before it got removed :-)