Wedding Stationery Timeline

Before jumping into buying your wedding stationery, we recommend you book your venue and finalise your guest list. This will prevent you having to reword and resend invitations due to a change of address for example. Quite often, you’ll have a venue for the service and another one for the reception, so booking them both for the planned date can be difficult. Make sure to plan ahead so you know the locations on your invitations will be available.

We also advise you decide on your wedding theme and colours by the time you order your save the dates, as this will help you coordinate the rest of your stationery. Once you have considered these points, you’re ready to start your wedding stationery journey! To help you, we’ve created a handy timeline for you to refer to and plan out your stationery needs in plenty of time.

So, here’s everything you need to think about before and after your wedding…

9 Months Before: Samples

Samples let you see your invitations in real life so you can check the quality and make sure they’re just how you imagined. Ordering samples ahead of time also helps you test the service of a few different stationers to narrow down your choices and help you find the perfect one for your big day.

Once you’ve found your ideal invites, we recommend buying the rest of your stationery to match. You can explore what else your stationer has available so everything has the same look and feel, or explore other suppliers to find the rest of your stationery. You can even save money by creating some of the stationery yourself, using the samples you’ve received as inspiration to build from.

6 to 12 Months Before: Save The Date

Save the dates are an important part of the wedding timeline, perfect for sending guests advanced notice of your wedding, especially if you are getting married abroad or inviting people from afar. Making sure you have your save the dates sorted and sent out far ahead of your wedding helps ensure that everyone can make the necessary arrangements to ensure they can attend, including taking time off of work and potentially booking a hotel or arranging childcare.

We recommend sending out your save the dates at least 6 to 8 months before your wedding. Don’t worry if you haven’t got everything sorted that far ahead, your save the dates only usually need to contain the actual date and the names of the people invited.

 

6 Months Before: “Be My” Cards

Now it’s time to really build excitement for the big day… it’s time to ask your friends to be your bridesmaid, best man, or part of the wedding party. “Will you be my” cards are a great way to ask and invite them into the wedding party, letting them know what their role will be and getting them excited for the big day. You can also choose be my usher, maid of honour, flower girl, and page boy cards if you wish.

 

3 to 6 Months Before: Wedding Invitations

To many couples, the actual wedding invitations are the most important pieces of the wedding stationery! Your official wedding invites include everything your wedding attendees will need to know about the big day, including the address, time and date, and any special instructions that they might need to know. The wedding invitations also . You can even slip in an option for people to request a song or state any dietary requirements as well.

Some wedding invitations can be bought as bundles, which include guest information and RSVP cards in addition to the invite. This helps you get an idea of numbers by seeing who RSVPs, as well as getting information about plus ones. Plus, it’s handy as it can save time (which is essential when wedding planning!) with the added bonus of making sure your wedding stationery matches with the same aesthetic.

 

4 Months Before: Evening Invitations

Evening invitations are a must-have to invite all your additional guests that may not be attending the ceremony. This could include work colleagues, business partners, neighbours, or anyone you weren’t able to invite to the main event. Just make sure you put the time you wish your evening guests to arrive to avoid confusion, it’s better to be really clear to prevent mix ups with guests turning up at the wrong time.

 

2 to 4 Months Before: Wedding Favours and Little Extras

Little extras make a big difference to how your wedding looks, and we always recommend couples choose a few extra table decorations and bits to add extra style to their venue! A few good ideas to think about are: table confetti, wedding favour tags, drinks tokens, wedding signs, wine bottle labels and more.

 

1 Month Before: Order of Service

We recommend having the order of service for your wedding sorted at least a month in advance, as sorting these out can take a while so it’s best to make sure you leave enough time to avoid extra stress. Ask your wedding stationers about the best way to send over your ceremony information to make your lives easier and prevent errors. It’s important to consider that you might need to go back and forth with a couple of different proofs or versions before you’re completely happy, so it’s best to build in extra time here.

 

2 to 4 Weeks Before: Table Decorations

Wedding table decorations and items that include your guests’ names, such as table plans and place name cards, should be done closer to the big day in case your guest list suddenly changes. As your wedding approaches, it’s likely that some people will have to cancel last minute or change their plans, so ordering your table plans and place cards close to the big day will prevent unforeseen costs.

 

Congratulations! The big day has finally arrived and all your hard work is coming together to create the perfect wedding day. Relax and enjoy your special day together, there’s only one step left now, the thank you cards… but they can wait until after the honeymoon!

1 to 3 Months After: Thank You Cards

When your wedding journey is complete, thank your guests for attending and for any gifts that you received with personalised thank you cards! We recommend sending thank you cards 1-3 months after the day, as this gives you time to settle down into married life and go on your honeymoon first.

We hope this has been useful! You can download the complete wedding stationery infographic with all the times and wedding stationery to check against, or bookmark this article in your wedding plans. If you need any further help, we have more blogs available from our wedding experts on what to write in your wedding invitations, how to cater for guests with specific requirements, and what to write in writing your wedding thank you card or your save the date cards.

To discover all our stationery themes and styles, you can browse our beautiful and bespoke wedding stationery designed and hand packed in our studio by our team of wedding specialists.