Save The Date Wedding Cards

PLAN & PREPARE WITH SAVE THE DATE CARDS AND IDEAS

Save the Date cards are a great way of announcing to your friends and family that you have got engaged and that there is an impending wedding on the horizon. Whilst a save the date wedding card can sometimes be a very personal thing to you both as a couple, they can also be seen as purely a functional item which can in some instances bear no relation to the rest of the wedding stationery you go on to commission. At Pemberly Fox, we have created a range of save the date ideas each of which forms part of a matching wedding stationery suite comprising all the items that you may require for your wedding, concluding with the wedding thank you cards.

Why send a wedding save the date and when should I send it

More often than not, couples tend to send out Save the Date for their wedding if they are looking to get married overseas, if their wedding coincides with a busy seasonal period such as the build-up to Christmas or if it coincides with months of the year that are popular for marriages. We would recommend that you send your cards out around six to eight months prior to the event itself, on the assumption that the wedding invitations will be sent two months before the wedding. Obviously, if you plan to marry in a particularly popular location, during a particularly popular travel time, then it might be sensible to send out the Save the Date even further in advance. To cite an example, Pemberly Fox produced the stationery for a couple who were getting married in New Zealand in February 2017 who sent their Save the Date Cards out in November 2015.

Should you send a card to everyone?

Honestly, the short answer is yes you should as this will not only avoid some people feeling left out and not wanted, it will also help to keep confusion to a minimum.

What Should I include?

You might also want consider what information you would like to include and whether or not you would like your guests to confirm their attendance, so let’s deal with each of these points in turn:

- If you are not holding a destination wedding but are sending save the date cards for a UK wedding, then the content can be kept to a minimum and the key things to include are the Date and Location (a City or town will usually do) followed by venue, if you have chosen it. You might also want to include a wedding website which recipients can visit for more information if you have created one.

- For those of you who are holding a destination wedding, it would be sensible to include a wedding information card especially if there are multiple events requiring different dress codes, as this will determine the size of suitcase your guests will require. Also include a list of accommodation and any other activities which might be fun or interesting, as many of your guests will take this time as a holiday.

- In either case, it is best to let guests know that an invitation will follow.

- Whilst historically it had not been expected that guests would reply to your Save the Date, more and more these days, especially with long haul destination weddings, a reply is becoming the accepted norm, which means that the actual wedding invitation has become more of a Pour Mémoire than anything else, acting as a sort of gentle reminder.

What else should I be thinking of when it comes to wedding save the date ideas?

Pemberly Fox would suggest that in the first instance you think about the kind of Wedding Invitations you would like and then work back from there. Whilst the Invitation and Save the Date cards need not necessarily be closely related in terms of look and feel, we would certainly recommend that you at least think about “tying them all in” as shown in our wedding sets. In terms of style, there are fewer definitive rights and wrongs, so if you would like something illustrated, cut to a specific shape or would simply like to stay with the really traditional wedding stationery, the decision is always a very subjective one. The only thing we would point out is that the Save the Date wedding cards, will be the very first communication received by your guests regarding your big day, and will therefore be seen as a taster of things to come that will inform guests about the day itself.

Ordering lead times

When considering production lead times, we anticipate that from initial contact with you to final delivery of the cards will take approximately one month. Naturally this is not a time frame that applies to every single order, whilst some can be quicker it usually depends on how many people need to be involved in the decision-making process and of course how complex the product becomes. As with all things, the simpler the quicker. Once you have signed off the proofs, production is likely to be 10 working days at most, depending on the type of print process you have opted for.

Shipping Information

Naturally for all our couples based in London who would like to collect their Invitations, we would love to meet you in the event that we have not already done so. Failing that, we are happy to send on a same day service using a courier service which you can arrange yourself or we can arrange for you. For those who are in less of a hurry or living outside London we tend to ship using DHL on a next day service to all UK destinations. If you are based overseas, including Europe, then we are able to send to any Global Destination serviced by FedEx, and would request that you allow up to 3 working days for delivery from the day that they leave our office in Chelsea.