I hemmed and hawed for a while about the whole save the date thing. It’s a cute idea really, and it makes a ton of sense, especially if you want everyone you invite to the wedding to be able to come. I’m going to sound like a total negative nancy here but I really don’t want everyone we invite to come.
Both Chuck and I come from huge families and some of the people in those families we rarely talk to. I know it’s all about celebrating the day, but when you start adding second cousins and friends of the family, who we haven’t seen in years it gets a little over the top. The people that are most important to us we talk to on a regular basis and already know the date of the wedding, so sending save the dates seems a bit redundant.
Another thing is the cost. Weddings these days cost so. much. money. Even with our super simple plans, it’s going to cost way more than we were originally thinking, so I thought that this would be an easy place to cut costs. Making up 200 save the dates, magnets or cards aren’t that expensive coming in anywhere between $0.75 to $2.00 each you could spend $150-400, but we haven’t even talked about shipping them to you, to then send out. Stamps these days cost $.049 or close to $100 for 200 people. Add it all adds up and you’re looking at $250 on the cheapest end, not including all the extra shipping, taxes and fees.
These are just the save the dates! We aren’t even started talking about the real invitations here. Though I did have a friend who only sent save the dates and directed people to her wedding website for RSVP and all other pertinent info, which isn’t a half bad idea if all of your guests are computer literate.
And since most people are quite computer literate I have also been playing with the idea of sending digital save the dates, companies like MailChimp, Facebook or another internet based notification could really be helpful with this. We are still trying to figure that part out right now.
For us, the best decision was to skip the save the dates and only do real, regular invitations. I want to note that we are planning on sending the save the dates a little early than you normally would so people who need to have enough time to book hotels & flights. After all, it is the invitation that has the hotel booking info.
I’m not saying this is for everyone, but for us, this worked best. Hey, we are being green!