A part of our role as destination wedding planner is to guide and support our couples with all things related to their stationery – by which we mean destination wedding save the dates, invitation and RSVPs, in addition to event day stationery including menu cards, place name cards and signage. Because we consider that each element of your wedding must be intentionally designed and beautifully coherent, we’re involved with these seemingly small details to make sure every one in every of our weddings is a show-stopper. To reply all of your paper-based puzzles, we’ve put this together in collaboration with Bigday Designs: our ultimate couples’ guide to destination wedding stationery.
We’ll be answering all of your questions and providing you with a glance inside how our process works in the case of designing, sending and managing invitations (and their responses!) for destination weddings, including:
- When do you have to send save the dates for a destination wedding? What about invitations?
- Must you send paper or digital invitations?
- Tips on how to select your wedding stationery to your destination wedding.
- What’s our involvement as your wedding planner in tracking RSVPs?
- Tips on how to make your destination wedding stationery themed to your chosen country or wedding venue without being cheesy?
- What’s on trend in wedding stationery for 2025?
Destination Wedding Stationery Collaborator: Bigday Designs
We’d first wish to introduce you to Bigday Designs, who we’ve got worked with extensively to create an array of creative, unique and luxuriously detailed stationery items for our Elegante by Michelle J couples. We spoke to them about a few of the questions on this guide to get their perspective, so throughout you shall be getting expert advice from multiple places! All stationery pictured on this blog was designed by Bigday Designs for Elegante by Michelle J couples.
The Destination Wedding Stationery Guide
What sort of stationery do you would like for a destination wedding?
We recommend the next wedding stationery items for a destination celebration:
- Save The Dates: Your first opportunity to let people know that you just’ve set a date (and possibly a venue, or not less than a location) to your destination wedding, and also you’d love for them to attend. You may ask people to ‘soft RSVP’ to get your first gauge of likely guest numbers
- Formal Invitations: Once the small print of your wedding are finalised, formal invitations supply the crucial information to your family members and request a firmer attendance RSVP. Do not forget that save the dates and invitations need only be sent 1 per couple, family or household, so that you don’t need as many because the variety of guests you’ve gotten!
- A Welcome Pack*: We at all times recommend some form of welcome bag or pack to your guests upon arrival at your destination wedding. This could be so simple as a schedule, details and dress code for the marriage day and any pre- or post-wedding events you’ve gotten planned, or could also be more extensive. Past Elegante by Michelle J couples have included city guides, an inventory of activities guests can join before the marriage day, or cards intended for guests to fill out and return to them on the marriage day – for instance, ‘what advice would you give to the married couple?’
- A Seating Plan: A chart of some form, displayed on the marriage day to let people know where their seat on the table is. Alternatively, escort cards could be used featuring each guest’s name on the front and their table number on the reverse or inside.
- Personalised Menu Cards: Individual menu cards for every guest to provide a stunning regularity to the aesthetic. Even in case your guests are having the identical menu, some will need special dietary options or kids menus.
The sky really is the limit for the variability of wedding stationery items you possibly can have, but it is a list of the items we feel are really essential for a destination wedding.
*We consider ourselves connoisseurs of wedding welcome bags, and actually have a dedicated guide to creating them – click here to read it!
What’s our role as your wedding planner in the case of sending, managing and tracking responses for save the dates and invitations?
Every wedding planner is different, but at Elegante by Michelle J we at all times offer in depth support with designing, sending and managing your save the dates and invitations. The extent to which we take it off your hands is at all times as much as you, but some couples like to really hand over your complete process and others prefer to stay involved and revel in watching the RSVPs are available.
Our behind the scenes systems and processes are able to go, in order that we will aid you with all the following:
- Finding the proper destination wedding stationery designer for you
- Making a design that you just love and works well with the remainder of your wedding look
- Collating your guest list and uploading it into a selected platform, where we will keep track of RSVPs, dietary requirements, special requests and so forth
- Liaising together with your wedding stationery designer to provide all of them the guest information they need
- Sending your save the dates and invitations, whether in paper or digital form
- Collecting responses and following up with anyone who doesn’t reply before our chosen deadline
- And just about anything that involves mind!
How long before the marriage do you have to send out save the dates and invitations for a destination wedding?
Every couple’s timeline looks different (we’ve planned weddings anywhere from years upfront to simply weeks ahead, so it varies hugely!), but general rule of thumb is that this…
Once you’ve gotten a date and wedding venue secured to your destination wedding, you possibly can send out your save the dates. As attending a destination wedding asks more of a guest than attending one in your property country, what with planning flights, accommodation, possibly arranging childcare etc, the more notice you possibly can give people the higher.
Assuming that you just did send save the dates, you possibly can follow up with a proper invitation anywhere from 6 to 2 months before your wedding. That is your guests’ likelihood to formally RSVP and for us to begin collecting ‘final’ attendance numbers – though we use the word final loosely because, in our experience, exact numbers often change barely right right down to the day of the marriage itself!
What information should save the dates and wedding invitations contain?
Destination wedding save the dates simply have to let people know which date to avoid wasting, and not less than an idea of the situation of your celebration. Some Elegante by Michelle J couples desired to keep their actual wedding venue a secret until the day itself, so if this seems like you then just letting guests know which general area they’re heading to is beneficial. Don’t forget to place your names on there!
Your wedding invitations to your destination celebration must have a bit more detailed information on them. You may do that either by putting all of the essentials on the paper invitation itself, sending a bit ‘suite’ of stationery including an info card, a dress code card etc, or by including a link (if digital) or QR code (if paper) taking them to a marriage website with all the small print. Locations, timings, themes and dress codes (if applicable) and any special requests must be in your invitation to provide guests time to arrange.
Must you send save the dates and invitations digitally or physically?
This really is entirely as much as you! A few of our couples love the standard paper way and send each their save the dates and invitations within the mail. Nevertheless, this doesn’t work for everybody for various reasons:
- More environmentally conscious couples may resolve to send digital save the dates and/or invitations to chop down on paper usage
- Some couples send their save the dates digitally, following up with formal paper invitations only to those that RSVP’d ‘yes’ to the primary contact
- It also works out dearer to send paper save the dates and invitations, so that is one area you possibly can cut down a bit in your budget if crucial
It will be important to notice that, whether you decide for digital or paper invitations, you possibly can still have complete creative freedom and control over the design. We often work with stationery designers like Bigday to craft bespoke designs and illustrations, which we will then upload into our digital software for sending. Don’t let perceived design restrictions sway your decision with this one!
Tips on how to resolve what you’d like your wedding stationery to seem like. Where do you have to start?
We asked Bigday Designs about this one, and here’s what they said:
‘ start line is to see what has been done before, look online for inspiration and create a moodboard with a lot of different designs you want, then narrow down your ideas based in your wedding theme. Your save the date or invitation will provide your guests with the primary glimpse of your ‘Big Day’, setting the scene for the style and tone they will expect at your celebrations. Consider your wedding venue style, destination country, time of 12 months you’re getting married in addition to your color scheme, level of ritual of your wedding and overall aesthetic.’
We at all times work with our couples to design stationery that forms a cohesive set, from the primary moment it lands on people’s welcome mat or of their inbox all the way through to after they sit down for dinner in your wedding day. Setting the tone after which following through with it is only one strategy to elevate guest experience, immersing them in the marriage world we’ve built for them.
Click here to go to Bigday Designs’ website and browse some more of their work.
Are you able to get creative with the design elements of your wedding stationery? Just how creative?
Over to Bigday Designs again for this one – much of their previous work incorporates unusual shapes (stationery doesn’t need to be rectangular, and even two dimensional!), intricate design details, 3D surprises and other fun alternatives to the norm. Here’s what they said about considering outside the box together with your destination wedding stationery:
‘We love producing stationery that’s a bit bit different – something latest, something that matches the couple’s personality and is as unique as they’re. Stationery doesn’t have any rules that should be followed, and it doesn’t at all times need to be traditional. Think big, think ‘on the market’, think ‘how can we impress and amaze our guests?’, and leave them wondering what other surprises await them at the marriage!’.
How your wedding venue or destination wedding country influences your wedding stationery design…
Should you are inviting your guests to a city centre wedding in Italy, theming your save the dates and invitations around palm trees and beaches could also be confusing. Similarly, in case your wedding venue is grandiose and historic and also you’re requesting a black tie dress code, whimsical country garden stationery won’t do the trick. It’s essential to convey your wedding destination country, venue and overall style and aesthetic of your celebrations right from the word ‘go’.
…and the right way to ‘theme’ your destination wedding stationery without being cheesy.
Some ideas we’ve explored with our couples up to now for incorporating the ‘theme’ of their wedding without being cheesy or too obvious are:
- Bespoke venue illustrations on the stationery, giving guests a glimpse of what’s to return
- Taking elements of the day reminiscent of the florals and including them within the stationery design
- Consistency with the aesthetic of your stationery and your venue or country – including a Mediterranean tile pattern for a Mallorcan wedding, for instance, or a red wine colored card for an Italian celebration
Considering outside the box can assist elevate your wedding stationery, and we asked Bigday Designs for his or her ideas on this one too:
‘Incorporating your venue style into your stationery is vital – classic and trendy for a city hotel wedding, florals for a rustic manor celebration, or vineyards, villas and beach clubs for coastal destination weddings.
The time of 12 months you’re getting married also plays a component, together with color schemes. Weddings in numerous seasons have different aesthetics in numerous countries, but remember you don’t need to be boxed in by classic color mixtures – you possibly can have brilliant tones in winter and pastels in autumn!’.
What’s trending in wedding stationery for 2025?
Bigday Designs told us:
‘We’re finding that lots of couples are choosing the web approach to wedding invitations, with paperless post invites, wedding web sites and online RSVPing gaining popularity. Nevertheless, we expect there’s nothing like receiving an invite within the post – they’re such special keepsakes.
Looking forward to 2025 we’re seeing lots of trendy, daring color mixtures, venue illustrations, and inclusions of the couple themselves and even their pets on their stationery. Vintage designs are also trending, with a lot of texture, embellishments, wax seals and bows and ribbons continuing to be popular from this 12 months. We still expect to see a lot of the classic, stylish stationery too – foiling, embossing and letterpress combining lasting elegance with contemporary twists.
Finally, ‘after the marriage’ stationery is on the rise – increasingly more couples wish to send thanks notes that match their entire suite of stationery, and we love designing these too!’.
And so concludes our ultimate guide to destination wedding stationery. We expect we’ve covered almost every thing, but in case you are still left with questions they are going to all be answered in your wedding planning journey with us. Use the link below to contact us and schedule a complimentary wedding planning consultation.
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