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Mail invitations six to eight weeks before the wedding, earlier for destination weddings. Set the RSVP deadline about three weeks before the big day so you have a buffer week to chase late replies before the caterer needs the final headcount. Order extra invitations and weigh one finished suite before buying postage, since heavy paper and inserts change what the mailing costs.
| Milestone | Timing | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Save-the-dates | Four to six months out (six to eight for destination weddings) | Lets guests book travel and time off; not the formal invitation |
| Invitations mailed | Six to eight weeks out | Enough notice to plan, short enough that people don't forget |
| RSVP deadline | About three weeks out | Gives you a chase week before the caterer needs numbers |
| Final headcount to vendors | Roughly one to two weeks out | Caterers and venues lock quantities here; late changes get expensive or impossible |
It's the sweet spot between two failure modes. Mail earlier and the invitation becomes part of the background noise of people's lives: they'll set it aside meaning to RSVP and forget. Mail later and out-of-town guests can't arrange flights, hotels, and time off, especially anyone who needs to book across a border. The six-to-eight-week window gives local guests plenty of notice and distant guests just enough time to make plans. For destination weddings, shift everything earlier: guests are booking international travel, so eight to twelve weeks is the working range.
Start with the caterer's deadline, which is usually one to two weeks before the wedding, then add a week for chasing stragglers, then add the mail time for replies. That's how you land on an RSVP deadline about three weeks before the wedding. Build the chase week into the plan on purpose: a meaningful share of guests will miss the printed deadline, and one round of texts or calls the week after recovers most of them. If your RSVP deadline is the same week the caterer needs numbers, you'll be paying for phantom guests.
More than you think. Order ten to fifteen extras beyond your guest list: addresses will be wrong, a few envelopes will be ruined during assembly, someone will get added late, and you'll want a keepsake or two. Reordering a small batch later costs far more per piece than the extras do now, and matching the exact paper and print run later is never quite perfect. The same logic applies to RSVP cards and envelopes if you're using them.
Weigh one fully assembled invitation, inserts and all, before buying postage for the batch: wedding suites with heavy card stock, multiple inserts, and wax seals routinely land in higher postage bands than a standard letter. Square invitations are the classic trap in the US: because they can't be processed by standard sorting equipment, they attract the nonmachinable surcharge on top of the base postage. Take one finished suite to the post office, get it weighed and measured, and buy postage for the whole batch based on that one. In Canada, oversized or heavy suites price into the oversize lettermail bands the same way.
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