when to send out STDs

we waited until we had our location figured out & date booked. I'd be a little worried to just send out with the date. What if you find the perfect location but your first choice date is not available?

 

We sent out our STDs in late May for our April wedding.

I would say if you have a general idea I would put that on the invite. If you are trying to decide between Iowa and Cabo I would hold off on sending them since your guest will gauge the cost based on the location.

have you heard back from the people in Hawaii yet?

You could send out an engagement announcement, that has your date in it.

since the main reason we sent out STDs was to get people to book, we sent them out after we booked the location. i'd be worried to send them out before if you don't have anything booked - things could change!

Hi Christine,

we did hear back from them - we have everything that we need. the sales manager is on vacation until tomorrow. we are ok with everything except the 1st deposit (it is huge!) so we are going to be negotiating that and it may take a couple of weeks to sort it out (if they are willing to).

we have always had it in our plan that we would give our guests at least a year notice and really want to follow through with that, especially if Hawaii is in the picture!

then on a very selfish note, i designed these great boarding pass save the date's with a old map of hawaii as the background
http://bestdestinationwedding.com/fo...ave-dates.html
i really want to use those but feel funny having anything to do with hawaii on there unless we have booked it!

yes ann i agree - things change so fast with this wedding stuff.
at this point - i have 2 ideas

1. re-design a plain STD w/ logo and date and just send those (the date is not negotiable as it is our 5 year anniversary so we feel that if we find the right place and our date is not available then it is not the right place)
2. send the hawaii map STD with a letter (we started working on one the other night) basically giving an overview of what we are thinking of doing in Hawaii and asking who thinks they could come

I waited til I knew when and where, I sent mine as sort of an invitation to book and even gave them a deadline to get the "group rate". I sent mine in June for our May wedding, with an August 15 deadline for their first deposit. It worked out well. As of yesterday, I had 65 people reserve and another 15-20 supposedly coming. It just helped the guests to know where, so they could figure out if they could afford it.

I would wait on location also. We are getting married May 27th 2008 and sent the STD's out in the beginning of August (I think) 2007. Thats 10 months out and still seems like plenty of time.

Also if you do wait till you decide on location than until than you could at least maybe get the time of year/date out by word of mouth until the STD's are out. We started talking about our May wedding to a lot of people (people we felt most important on comming to the wedding) well before the STD's so that they could be aware of it.

I also say wait for the location, that way people know where they are saving the date to go to. If you want to send something now maybe you could say the month/year you plan on rather than being stuck with a date in case things change.