Hey friends!
I have a question about STD/ invitation etiquette and was wondering if you could help me.
I received a save the date from a sweet friend who was happy for me to be at her wedding. The wedding is is January and I have yet to receive the formal invitation. Would it be rude of me to ask her if she sent it? I’ve been having problems with mail getting delivered so I want to make sure I didn’t miss it. But I also don’t want to cause an awkward moment if she didn’t send one.
Thank you all! 1021-18
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It’s only October, the wedding is in January they have plenty of time to send out the invites yet.
I don’t know. Recently there was a wedding in my family and for some reason several invitations were not received. The couple found out the day before the wedding and were trying to call and invite over the phone. Maybe if someone had asked it could have been cleared up sooner
This happened to me for my wedding! The invitation for one of my relatives apparently went AWOL, and of course, I knew nothing about it, but fortunately in our case, someone did ask, and I found out through my mother. I immediately sent an email to the person, explaining that he absolutely was invited — and not as an afterthought — and sent him a new invite. That one apparently made it to its destination, and he came to the wedding, and it was all good.
But the upshot is that yeah, if you have reasonable grounds to believe you’re supposed to be invited, it probably doesn’t hurt to ask. I’m really quite thankful someone did in my case. I would have hated for my relative to think he’d been knowingly excluded.
Most wedding invitations are sent out 6-8 weeks before the wedding. If you haven’t received an invite five weeks before the wedding, then I would reach out.
Invitations are usually sent 6-8 weeks before the wedding.
And you can ask about the invite. Maybe say something like you want to finalize travel plans.
Since you’re having issues with mail delivery, I think it would be okay to ask. As AS said, you could always say you wanted to finalize travel plans (or have enough advance time to ask for time off from work, arrange a babysitter, or whatever).
The point of the save-the-date is for people to make travel plans, arrange for childcare, etc. As previous commenters noted, formal invitations don’t go out until some six to eight weeks before the wedding. If you haven’t received something by the first week of December, then I’d reach out to your friend.
Hi all! OP here.
Funny story: Pretty soon after I sent in this submission (probably 24 hours later), I got a private message from my friend asking me for my address again because she needed to send the invitations out 🙂 Happy ending after all!
The universe is weird like that! 😀
Have a lovely day!
That abbreviation made me wonder what wedding dates had to do with it…
You could ask her if invitations had been sent out already, plain and simple. Depending on her answer, you could honestly answer with saying you were worried that the mail delivery might have gone wonky again. It has happened twice that the mail supposedly could not find my name at my address, despite having lived there for twenty years.
Thank you! I was afraid I was going to have to say it! 🙂
It’s still early. Give it until December and then give her a call. If you received a save-the-date, then it is reasonable to assume that an invitation will eventually follow.
Invitations are typically sent 6-8 weeks before the wedding, so she may just be getting them out now or may have just sent them recently. It doesn’t hurt to ask – say something about having some problems with the mail and wanting to make sure you didn’t miss it.
I had the same thing happen. It was someone in my social group. When I hadn’t received an invite close to the date, I asked around in our group. Turned out one or more others hadn’t as well. Word got around to the groom and he contacted us, apologised and said with all that was going on, they’d forgotten to send a few invites. But by that time I’d already booked something else for that day because I’d assumed I wasn’t invited.
It’s imperative for the couple to come up with good, reliable organization when it comes to wedding invites. Do not put guests in the awkward or hurtful situation of wondering if they were either disinvited or forgotten. It’s very awkward to have to ask. Also, if you haven’t heard yes or not from some guests by a certain time frame, send them a polite email inquiring if they received the invite, just to make sure it wasn’t lost.
The same thing happened to my mother twice – with the same person. It was our neighbor, concerning her daughter’s wedding and then her own wedding years later. For her daughter’s wedding, my mom was verbally told to look out for a wedding invite soon. It never came, and neighbor never followed up with her. The second time was for neighbor’s own wedding. She called my mom, told her she was getting married, and asked for my mom’s address. My mom assumed it meant she was going to be invited. Again, no invite ever came. Perry rude in both cases.
Oddly, I was at a wedding, when I friend of mine asked me I had received the invitation to her daughter’s wedding about a month prior. We laughed, and I told her had the save the date, but no invitation. As it turns out, they had someone make and mail them for them. No one whose name fell in the last 1/3 of the alphabet received one. They are big on RSVP’s, they usually have enough food for many more than are invited. They figured it out when they started talking about the friends that hadn’t come. The invoice for mail charges reflects the mistake.
Anything can happen, I should have called her!
I see OP heard from the bride but an easy way to deal with this in the future would be call and ask how wedding planning is going. Is she having fun picking out flowers and dress and such. And eventually get around to “have you sent out the invitations yet”. If you should have gotten one by then she’s likely to say so. If she didn’t send you one she’s likely not going to be surprised that you haven’t received one to know if they’ve been sent or not.
So… I didn’t realize STD was “save the date” and thought to myself this is going to be a really awkward “sexually transmitted disease / wedding invitation” dilemma.