Cruise Weddings/STD & Invitation Question-How far in advance do you send these?

I am planning to send out the std magnets and flyers next month. This will give everyone 9 months to pay for their trip. The trip should be paid two months before departure.

We sent out save the dates newsletters, with more than information than will ever be needed, a year to the date of our weeding, we also send out treats and and updated news letter every 3 months

I skipped the whole save the date cards and basically just sent out invitations. I booked it with 10 months to go and figured the TA gave me a deadline of September 8th for First Deposit so since the whole thing isn't traditional anyways I sent out the whole invitation package yesterday..

On the "formal part" I put the customary Brides name/Grooms name, request your presence (blah blah blah) Sorry just not trying to ramble.

I then enclosed a separate card that said "We invite you to join us on a Celebration Cruise to the Bahamas. Followed by the dates of travel, TA information, & price of cabins and dates for payment. Then I did Response cards that had three lines for Wedding only, Wedding and Cruise, and Only in thoughts and prayers... That way I don't have to bother the TA to see who booked etc and don't have to wait for spoken responses. We both come from large familys and my fiance is a Marine so I sent invitations to at least 8 different states. I did the invitations myself so if anyone would like to see them I can email them to you. Also, I figured this way whenever I get the responses back I can start planning my OOT bags, my brochures and also my AHR which Im still not sure what i want to do with that yet.

Hi ladies. My fiance and I have decided to do a cruise wedding as well. We have told some family members so they can start saving but not all. My question is...did you send out your STDs before or after you booked?? I guess what Im trying to ask is, how did you know how many rooms to be put on hold before you sent out your STDs? Anyone with anything that can help I'd really appreciate it. I really have no idea what im doing. lol

I switched to group booking after booking so I booked first without knowing or needing to know how many rooms to hold then let people book and shortly before the wedding I switched to a group and had all my guests switch to a group which saved them money, it was a round about way to do it but it worked for me.

We are sending out STDs a year before the cruise. However, we already know that 20 or so immediate family members will be cruising with us. My FI and I are going to be paying the deposit for 9 rooms a year before the cruise. After that we are giving them 6 months to pay for the remaining amount.

We sent out our invitations 11 months in advance. We didn't bother with STD's because our first deposit was due about 1 month after we sent the invites. We put on the invitation that the first deposit would serve as an RSVP (one less piece of paper to worry about-RSVP card). Since a cruise wedding is a bit nontraditional you can get away with doing things however you want. We used a passport invitation template from the forum and made them ourselves. Everyone loved them! Even people who aren't coming still have our invitation hanging on their fridge.

Thanks for the responses everyone!!