When my husband and I were planning our wedding, I realized I had no idea of when we should send out our wedding invitations.  Now my sister is planning her wedding, and I realize that I was not alone — a lot of people don’t know when you are supposed to send out invitations.

Wedding invitations actually don’t have to be sent out as early as you might think.  The general rule of thumb is to send them out about 2 months before the wedding, with an RSVP date of about 3 weeks before the wedding.  Ideally, this gives guests enough time to make travel plans well in advance.

However, in popular vacation areas and at high-traffic times of the year, 2 months might not be as much time as you would think to plan for a wedding.  So if you anticipate that your guests may have a hard time booking airfare and hotel rooms, you might consider sending out a "save the date" card with a little more warning — perhaps six months before the wedding.  This is not a formal invitation and does not require an RSVP — it is just a reminder for your guests.

Don’t forget, though, that you’ll need to leave plenty of time for choosing, ordering, and addressing your invitations.  This is where many people go wrong — they wait until just a few months before the wedding to start thinking about invitations.  Professional wedding invitations often take a little while to come back, so if you want Frangipani wedding invitations or tiger lily wedding invitations, be sure to order them in plenty of time!