Your Wedding Invitation Timeline Cheatsheet

As you begin to plan your wedding, the order in which to do tasks can be confusing. Should you book your venue or your planner first? When should you go wedding dress shopping? And most importantly, when do you communicate with your guests about the wedding?

Wedding invitations are a multi-step process, so it’s important that you have a timeline planned out for when to order and send each piece, giving your guests an appropriate amount of time to plan. 

For couples who are planning at least one year in advance for their wedding, we’ve created the perfect invitation timeline. If you’re looking for a seamless planning experience, follow our timeline below and opt for one of our curated Lily and Roe invitation collections!

A One-Year Wedding Invitation Timeline

12 Months Before Your Wedding

One year before your wedding you’ll want to set a solid foundation for your invitations. This is the time to create the final guest list, collect addresses, and keep them somewhere organized so you can return to them for each step in the process. Thankfully, there are some great websites online that can help you collect and organize addresses so you don’t have to reach out to each guest individually.

For any couples planning a destination wedding, you’ll want to give your guests more time to plan their travel and accommodations, so you should send out Save The Dates at this time.

9 Months Before Your Wedding

The best time to send your Save the Dates for a local wedding is nine months before the wedding date. Since these are usually less elaborate than a wedding invitation they tend to take less time to produce, so you can order and mail them in the same month. When ordering, remember you'll send one Save the Date per household, not per person, so your total order should be significantly fewer than the number of people on your guest list.

6 - 8 Months Before Your Wedding

After sending your Save the Dates, it’s time to order invitations! This might seem early, but it allows you plenty of time for proofing, shipping, and assembly. Foil and letterpress invitations require more printing time so they should be ordered even earlier – closer to the 8-month mark. And don’t forget to purchase some nice stamps! The last thing you want on your gorgeous invitations is the a bold red white and blue flag glaring from the corner. 

If you’re planning a destination wedding or one where most guests are coming in from out of town, it’s a good idea to send out your wedding invitations six months before the wedding. This allows everyone to finalize their travel plans and make any other necessary arrangements.

10 - 12 Weeks Before Your Wedding

For local weddings, invitations should be sent out 10 - 12 weeks before the wedding date. Even if you don’t have a lot of guests traveling from out of town, it’s best to give guests plenty of time to arrange for any childcare, purchase an outfit, and prepare for your wedding day. We suggest heading to your local post office in person to make sure that you have the appropriate postage for your invitations and to see if your invitations may require hand-canceling. Hand-canceling is a process where a postal worker stamps your envelope by hand instead of running it through a machine.

4 Weeks Before Your Wedding

The four-week mark is when you should plan to have your wedding details finalized. This should be your RSVP due date, allowing you to give your caterer your final guest count and so you can create a seating chart. This is also a great time to make any other stationery purchases such as your signs, menus, and even thank you cards.

2 Months After your Wedding

Even after your wedding has passed, the experience isn’t truly complete until you’ve sent out your thank you cards! Friends and family are such an important part of a wedding day, and you want to show them how much you appreciate the time and money they spent to celebrate with you. Sending out thank you cards in a timely manner tells them that you made it a priority, and also allows you to feel accomplished in completing your wedding experience.

Beautiful Wedding Invitations by Lily & Roe Co.

At Lily & Roe Co., we understand that you want high-quality, beautiful invitations without the time and effort that a custom stationery suite requires. Our curated collection allows for easy decision-making and a convenient online ordering process, so you can get back to focusing on other tasks. We hope that our wedding invitation timeline helps make this process even smoother. And if you want a guiding hand in creating your perfect wedding invitation suite from start to finish, head over to our Complete Guide to Elegant Wedding Invitations!