When should I order my wedding invitations?

How do I know, when to do what?

Often, as a bride you’ll only plan a wedding once! And as you go along, you realise there are SO many things you need to do! So how on earth are you to know when to do what? Well, you can engage a wedding planner, or purchase a wedding planning diary but if that’s not on the cards then it can be difficult to know.

The timeline for your wedding invitations will vary depending on if you are inviting interstate or international guests, or keeping things local. If you are requesting guests travel for your wedding, we suggest you allow more time. This is because they are likely to need to make arrangements for leave from work, accommodation and flights.

We have put together a general guide below. When planning your invitations and to make sure there is no last-minute rush, and we find, it’s much easier to work backwards to work out roughly when you should be calling us to start.

Your wedding reception venue will most likely require final numbers two to three weeks before the day. Give them a buzz to confirm this with them. Add to that a week or so for you to chase those last few guests who are yet to RSVP. This means, your RSVP date ought to be approximately 4 weeks before the big day. To give your guests sufficient notice you will need to have posted them approximately 6-8 weeks before. You may wish to post them out with even more notice if you didn’t send out Save the Dates. And if you are inviting guests who are required to travel, you may wish to post them anywhere up to 6-9 months before the RSVP date.

Every bride and groom’s wedding invitation and stationery package differs in the amount of time it takes to produce. If you have chosen printed invitations, with little by-hand embellishments, then it’s fairly safe to say that once you’ve approved your proofs, the production time is well within two weeks. However, if your invitations are more elaborate then more time will be required to put together each invitation. It will also vary depending on the number of invitations you require. As you can imagine, an order of 20 wedding invitations compared with 150, takes a considerably different about of time to create! Therefore, as a general rule, we say around six weeks for preparation of an order. If you are concerned that you may be cutting it fine, then let us know and we can help guide you.

The amount of time it takes to prepare your package for order, essentially falls on the couple. We liaise with each individual couple, usually through a face-to-face consultation at a nearby cafe or via a series of emails, photos and phone conversations, to select papers, wording and put together your design. Usually within a day or so of you choosing each element, we have emailed you a digital proof with details of what you have selected for you to either approve, or provide feedback. Once you give us the “OK!” production can commence.

All-in-all, it’s probably a good idea to initiate the design of your invitations around 4-6 months in advance (depending on how indecisive you think you might be and the level of notice you want to give your guests!).

Chantel Steele
Owner/Manager for Luxe Invitations
info@luxeinvitationsaustralia.com