Save the Date

To send or not to send?

Deciding when to send your invitations out is not always easy. The standard timescale used to be 2 months before the big day but with busy schedules, holidays and life in general getting in the way, 8 weeks is often not enough notice for those you wish to attend.

Realistically invitations really need to be sent three to four months before the big day to allow people to organise and clear their schedules in order to attend. Sometimes even this amount of notice isn’t enough as holidays can be booked up to a year in advance. The solution has been Save the Date cards, informal announcements which precede your invitations by several months. These cards are now being viewed as an obligatory part of the invitation process but with tightening budgets are they something that you will need to send out?

Save the Date cards are a wonderful touch and incredibly useful in some situations but you should always keep in mind that those you send a Save the Date card to must be invited to the event. Sometimes people have found themselves regretting sending the cards out too early as their relationships have changed and they would no longer want to invite a certain person to the event. It is incredibly important that you make the list of which people you are sending cards to very carefully.




Here are a few situations where Save the Date cards are ideal:
· Events scheduled near bank or religious holidays often require a Save the Date to be issued in order to ensure that your guests will have sufficient times to adjust their plans in order to attend. Remember that different religions have different days of importance throughout the year and whilst you may not celebrate that day some of your guests will.

· The busiest months for holidays and weddings are June, July and August. Advance notice for guests is often greatly appreciated as it allows guests to change any pre-booked holidays without excessive charges or ensure that they can organise annual leave from their place of employment.

· Some guest may have to travel a long way in order to attend your event, which will be a costly affair for them. Booking travel arrangements and hotels are often cheaper the further in advance that you can book them. Also if your event is abroad, the more time you allow for your guests to make arrangements, the better chance they will be able to attend your event.
The decision is a personal one and one that should be thought about with great care. There are many pros and cons to the process and these have to be considered in relation to your event.



Personally, I choose to send them to those I am 100% positive that I would like to attend, mainly close friends and family or important business associates. From there you will receive an indication of who will be able to make it and who will not, meaning that you will have a better idea of numbers well in advance of the event.

Written by Jac at Little Tiger Creations for Guide to Being a Scottish Bride

Why not pop onto Jac's website and check out more of her designs, or have a look at her blog for ideas?

Stationery (part 1)

When it comes to planning a wedding a very important element of the planning is your stationery. Do you simply buy it off the High Street? Do you get a bespoke design? Or have you a crafty ability and can make it yourself? These are all things you have to consider.

The next thing to think about is style. Do you want it to complement the theme of your wedding? What sort of colours are you having for the wedding, how would you like them to compliment your stattionery.....oh the mind boggles and to be quite honest there's to much to think about your head begins to hurt!! Lets simplify it a little:

Stationery you will more than likely need -

* Save the Date Cards - these are great wee cards that you send out approximately a year before the wedding (especially if your wedding is at certain times of the year when people might be otherwise busy like summer holidays, Eastertime or even if it's a midweek wedding). These can be simple little postcard notifications ordered from the likes of Vistaprint
Or if you're more crafty you can make a wee card yourself to let people know when your wedding is, where it is and any other details you feel might be important (for instance if you have a wedding website).

* Invites - the most important piece of stationery for a wedding!! These are pretty much as you suspect to invite people to the wedding. For this you can go along the Vistaprint route - less personal feel but cost effective and less stressful as you work from the styles and designs on their website to create your own (unless you're creative and want to upload a design you've created yourself).

Or you can take the route I've taken and order stationery from an online business. Here you can work with the designer to create something specific and tailored to your needs, you have a greater level of control over your design. Many people this this is a more expensive route to take, however many companies will offer discount or packages if you are ordering ranges of stationery from them.
For bespoke stationery or even standard handmade stationery I would recommend Little Tiger Creations who is run by a very lovely and helpful Scottish lass, Jac who got married last year and so understands the struggle to get stationery the way you want it at a cost effective price.

*RSVP Cards - Simply cards you can have made to send out with your invites for people to tick a box to say they will/will not attend the wedding. This is especially a good idea if you think certain family members or friends will forget to RSVP. If you're as bad as me, it might be an idea to stick some stamps on certain ones so that they have no excuse not to RSVP.
Tip: make a wee note on each card with a number or letter in the corner so if they forget to note on who they are you can identify the sender - for instance number 1 might be your mum so stick a "1" in the bottom corner of the RSVP but make sure it's somewhere only you will notice and not the recipient and remember to keep a note of who all the numbers correspond to!!

This concludes part 1, more to follow later!!