Sorry, but he's wrong. Invitations should be sent 6-8 weeks ahead of time (Many send farther out than that). You need to have your RSVP's back in hand a month before the wedding so you can call all those who did not respond and get your final count to the caterer. I'm with you on this one.

I think that it is good to inform your out of town guests of the date early, so that they can arrange their travel plans (and vacation time). I would tell close family and best best friends as soon as you know the date (they'll probably ask anyway).

There was an interesting string on this forum called "Save the Date Announcements/Invitations" recently (you can still find it, and you might want to read it), and I was thinking of it when I received such a card the other day. One poster said she thought it was a good idea to send save-the-date cards even to local guests, "just to be safe." But most of us disagreed with her. Several posters said they felt that this was an example of "plan-your-life-around-my-wedding" bridezilla stuff. Mary said, "IMHO (for what it's worth) the whole 'save the date' thing is getting way out of hand. I've even heard people go ballistic because someone didn't attend their wedding 'even though I told them the date a year ago.' Some people seem to view them as "I've reserved this date on your calendar, don't dare plan anything else.'" I think she makes a good point: you want to avoid anyone thinking that is YOU. I must admit that I was annoyed when I received that save-the-date card from a local family the other day for a wedding next summer. I wondered if they are trying to compete with someone else's event the same day for the local guests. But I think if you are judicious in audience and style -- that is, you choose carefully a limited, close group to whom you announce the date early, and don't do it in a way that almost looks like an invitation -- i.e., preferably just a mention in a phone call, e-mail, or card or letter you were sending anyway, not a special save the date card -- you will be just fine.

We are having a house-warming in the fall. We told people about it through an email last fall. This is because many of the people that MAY want to attend need to plan vacation time and flight/accommodations. However we just dropped a note, "if you are interested.. blah, blah, blah." We only sent this to our friends/family outside of driving distance. I feel the same can be done with a wedding. However, I wouldn't expect those people to plan their lives around me. At the same if they would want to attend, we want to give them plenty of advance notice to plan, especially to those who only get 1 week of vacation per year.

Otherwise, for this event or other major events such as a wedding, 6-8 weeks needs to be the time line for invitation if you want a decent RSVP time.