You just got engaged and you have told all of your friends and family your good news! So you and your fiancé have discussed your future wedding and set a date. Next, you have to start shopping for your wedding invitations. Proper custom for mailing your wedding invitations would be popping them into the mail as soon as all the basic plans are in order, however they have to be mailed no later than 6-8 weeks before your wedding date. Choosing the design of the wedding invitation you like is as essential as choosing the venue of your wedding or picking your dress. If your guests are traveling from far locations, then you can and should use “save-the-date cards”. Save-the-date cards should be mailed no later than 4 months before your wedding. However if you are scheduling your wedding for a far-off location, around a busy holiday, or during a peak season when flights and hotels will be reserved in advance, they should be sent out 8-12 months in advance your wedding. It will assist your guests by allowing them enough time to make travel and hotel arrangements. The preparation of your wedding invitations should be done at least 4 months before your wedding date. This will save your sanity if any problems come up by giving you enough time to make corrections. However you can avoid any printer’s problems by designing your own wedding invitations. You should find out the amount of postage for your wedding invitations after one is put together. You can do this by taking one assembled envelope to the post office and asking how much it will cost to mail it. Your envelope should contain of your wedding invitation, response card, and the inside and outside envelopes. It is beneficial to your guests, and to you, to provide the postage for the response card. Don’t forget to make sure that the RSVP date is at least 2 weeks before the wedding. This gives you time to make a last headcount for your wedding reception. You should start addressing envelopes 3 months before your wedding. Also if you have many guests to invite, it may take some time. If you set aside a small bit of time each day to complete a certain amount of envelopes (say 10 or 20), you will have them done in no time! You will also need a checklist with your guests’ names and addresses so that you can verify the wedding invitations often to prevent errors. Any computer software that keeps track of addresses or lists should do the trick such as Microsoft Excel or Access. I personally use Parsons Technology Address Book Deluxe 6.0, however I’m not sure where to get copies of this software. Don’t forget to place your guests name on the response card, so that you can know who has RSVP’ed and who has not. On the day of your wedding or close to it (within about 2 weeks either before or after the wedding) is when wedding announcements should be mailed to those who were not invited to the wedding. You may not have invited them due because of various reasons such as budget problems, size of setting, or if you desired small, intimate wedding. If you feel that the receiver may feel upset for not being invited or miffed thinking you are expecting a present from them even though they weren’t invited to the wedding, feel free to include a small, heartfelt note inside the announcement explaining why you weren’t able to invite them such as “We value your friendship, and wish for your blessing on our marriage, however due to (insert reasoning) we weren’t able to invite all the loved ones that we wanted to. We hope your happy thoughts are with us as we create our new life together. Gifts are not expected, and we look forward to spending time with you after our honeymoon.” Then include your new address or phone number on it, if your contact details are changing, so your friends, family members, or co-workers have a way to get in touch with you. Keep in mind that good wedding etiquette does not stop with mailing out your wedding invitations. After the wedding is over, you will have to send thank you notes which involve more etiquette guidelines. Don’t forget that this is your wedding, and you can bend the etiquette rules to suit your desires. There are many wedding forums that discuss how to bend etiquette rules discreetly without upsetting your friends and family members.