Planning a wedding can be quite overwhelming at times. Whether you’re using Instagram, Pinterest or even TikTok to help plan your day, no doubt you’ll come across a tonne of inspiration and advice about things you ‘must have’ for your wedding.

When it comes to wedding stationery, there are lots of lovely items available for different stages of your planning, from bridal/wedding party proposal cards and invitation all the way through to day of stationery and thank you cards for once the wedding is over. But as with all aspects of a wedding, budget can definitely be a big deciding factor when it comes to choosing which items you’d like to go ahead with.

One of the things I often get asked about is save the dates, and whether they’re necessary and honestly the answer is a little more complex than a simple yes it or no, it really depends. There are a few reasons why you may or may not want to send out save the dates, but below are a few situations where you might want to consider it:

If you’re having a destination wedding

If you’re getting married overseas, you’ll want to give your guests as much notice as possible. You usually need to be quite far into the planning process to send out invitations (as you’ll need to hone in on those finer details), so that’s where save the dates come in handy. As the name suggests, they let your guests know the date of your wedding, so they can start making plans or at the very least get the date in their diary.

If you’re getting married on a Bank Holiday weekend

If your wedding is on a Bank Holiday weekend, you may need to give your guests some advance notice. People tend to make plans for holiday weekends quite far in advance, so it’s important you get your date in their diary as soon as possible. This is especially true if you’re getting married around Christmas time (if you and your guests celebrate it), as people are often booked up with other commitments at that time of year.

Another thing to consider is that accommodation tends to book up faster over Christmas and Bank Holiday weekends too, so they’ll probably want to start making arrangements quite early on.

If you have lots of guests that live far away

Even if you’re getting married in your hometown, you may still find save the dates useful if you have lots of friends and relatives that live far away. Giving guests as much notice as possible will be really helpful when it comes to planning accommodation and transport etc.. 

If you have the budget

And lastly, perhaps you don’t tick any of the boxes above but you still think you’d like to send out save the dates? If you have the budget for it, then you absolutely should!

Save the dates help build excitement for your day and it can never hurt to get your date in everyone’s diaries sooner rather than later, especially if your friends and family are anywhere near as busy as mine.

If you have a slightly smaller stationery budget and don’t need to give too much advance notice, I’d usually recommend saving your budget for your invitations and day of stationery instead.

When to send out your save the dates

So you’ve decided that you would like to order save the dates for your wedding. The next question is when to send them out to your guests? 

I usually recommend sending them out 10-12 months before your day but you can definitely send them out sooner if you’d like. Some couples like to send them out as soon as they’ve booked their venue (particularly if they’re having a destination wedding), so you just do what’s best for you. If you’re booking your wedding with less than a year to go, you could definitely just skip straight to the invitation stage.

Digital vs printed save the dates

If you don’t have a huge stationery budget, but still want to do some sort of save the date for your day, then a digital design could be a great compromise. The turnaround time for digital designs are usually a lot faster, and you don’t have to rely on the post either.

Printed stationery is always a bit more of an exciting experience for your guests (who doesn’t love receiving something special in the post?). Not only is a printed save the date nice for your guests to keep but it will make a wonderful keepsake for you too!

So hopefully this brief guide will help you think about whether you’d like to send save the dates or not, but ultimately you should do whatever is right for you as a couple and try not to feel pressured by things you see online - your wedding will be beautiful no matter what.

Click here to see my current collection of save the date designs.

All photos are by the wonderful Natalie Stevenson Photography.