How Far in advance?

I just confirmed my wedding at the Iberostar Maya for July 2010. Many people in my fiance's family think I should send out the wedding invites at the end of this summer so everyone who wants to make the trip can start planning ahead. I want to know how early did everyone send invites? If I do invites that early I don't think STD's are necessary. Or do I do STD's first? Everyone's already debating this so I want to figure out how everyone else did it. I love the boarding pass invites. I am wondering how much people have spent for these? So many things to figure out! I have so much time but I want to do things 'right'!

I definitely recommend doing save the dates if you want to send something out that far in advance. If you only do invites people will completely forget. STD's give people a chance to start planning...let the invites come later as a "reminder" that they need to get their stuff together and book. In our case a lot of people didn't (and still don't) know if they will be able to take off work or not, a year is honestly just too earyl in my opinion.

We did our STD's 11 months in advance and I will be sending invites in June for our Novemeber wedding. Our TA will be sending follow up information to everyone on the guest list after invites to inform them of the booking process, payments, etc...

Hope this helps you some!

I sent out STDs in January for our December wedding. I just finished my invitations this weekend and will probably send them out this next week or as soon as my custom postage stamps arrive. I would recommend waiting until a year out to send out any "paper" because people will forget if you send stuff out too soon. We booked our wedding 1.5 years ahead - engaged Dec 07 and booked wedding in May 08. We got the word out about our wedding orally to our close friends and family and waited until the 1 year out mark to send out the STDs - invitations are going out 6 months out and that's only because we need an actual head count.

It seems like everyone (guests) wants all the information, asap. With that in mind I'm thinking skip STDs, send out invites about 9 months in advance, and then a reminder card/brochure as it gets closer.

We all want to know WHO is going to come and I don't see any reason to hold onto the invites when we're all dying to get RSVPs back!

Wow thanks so much for all the input! I could go the STD route now and invites later or invites at the end of the summer like KimmyG said and a reminder as it gets closer.... all great ideas. I have another issue..... I KNOW that a small group of people will be attending, but my fiance has a HUGE family. We were going to invite EVERYONE to the destination wedding but now my mom is saying to invite it to the family we are closest to and see and who 'may' consider going. But this may cause an uproar...i don't know! I guess its a personal decision but I didn't know if anyone else ran into this kind of issue.

Like I'm thinking why send out over 150 invites to invite 300 people when maybe 30 people may actually come. Then...send out the invites to everyone for the reception at home. I just don't know!

As far as who to invite i would go ahead and choose only your close family (or pple that you want to be there) even though all the pple may not choose to come you should keep the count down to only those that your budget will allow just in case you get more of a response then you were expecting.

My ticker isn't working! i"ve been trying this for 20 minutes

I am sending out my STD's this week and my wedding is May 2010. I just wanted to give my guests a year ahead of time notice and then we will send out the invitations around October, so about 7 mos. before just to remind people and still give them plenty of time to book if they haven't already.

And I totally agree with heartbeat send the invites to just your close friends and family. You can always to the AHR to celebrate with your entire family. Destination weddings seem to be the less expensive route but once you have a huge party they can get really really expensive! But also an AHR on top of the wedding could be more expensive too, I would just sit down and break down your budget and see what is more affordable. Because with a DW and a AHR you will have two sets of invites and two receptions to pay for. Just something to keep in mind .