In the most unexpected time and place, your boyfriend has finally popped the question of the lifetime—and with all the love in your heart, you answered with a resounding “Yes”! Congratulations, you are now set for a grand wedding! After he slipped the diamond ring on your finger, it is now the right time to make the wedding plans. Of course, the wedding invitation is one of the most important things you need to do to ensure the attendance of all your friends, relatives and family members on your big day.

Everyone who has gone through the entire process of preparing for a wedding will definitely tell you it isn’t easy drafting the plan because you need to do a lot of organizing, writing, contacting, designing and preparing in the entire duration of the pre-wedding period. From the creation of the guest list to the finalization of all the details in your ceremony and reception, your mind will really get saturated with all the smallest things needed to make your wedding perfect.

With all the necessary tasks to be accomplished before the wedding day, it is important to set a general time frame that you can follow to keep up with the right schedule. The timeframe will also help you avoid last-minute rushing. You could also spare yourself from a lot of headaches because when you have a list and schedule of all the things you need to do, it is less likely that you would forget something.

To help you iron out your tasks, here’s a basic timeline that you could use as a guide for your wedding invitation plans.

1 year- 9 months:

-  A year before your scheduled wedding, start working on the guest list by listing down the names of your friends, relatives and family members. This is important to know how many wedding invitations must be printed. You would also know if there are children and elderly who will attend your wedding.

-  You could also begin shopping for your wedding invitation. Select the candidates very well and then narrow down your choices to your favorites.

8- 7 months:

-  Think about the wording of your invitation very carefully. You can browse through several sample wedding invitations and gather some ideas for your own.

6 months:

-  Choose the wedding invitation design that you like the most and gather the details that you want to be included in making the invitation such as the names, address of locations, time and date.

-  Start making orders for your wedding reception menu, place cards and table decors based on your selected wedding invitation design or motif.

-  When you have decided to include response cards, select the RSVP date of the guests depending on the location of the reception venue. Also consider whose address will be placed on the invitation for the response envelopes.

5- 4 months:

-  This is the right time to finalize the wording of your wedding invitation and to place your order. Don’t forget to have some extra copies of the invitations if you have some last-minute guests to invite.

-  Re-check your guest list and make sure that you have the complete addresses of everybody.

4- 3 months:

-  Arrange your wedding invitations.

-  Gather all the wedding invitation pieces and place them inside the envelopes. Prepare these for delivery.

8-6 weeks:

-  Seal the wedding invitation envelopes and have your invitations mailed.

4- 3 weeks:

-  Monitor the response cards coming in and check the names on your guest list. This will help you keep track of those who will be able to attend your big day.

3- 2 weeks:

-  Make sure to contact the guests who weren’t able to send their response cards.

-   Make a final guest count and give a copy of it to the reception or dinner location.

This general timeline takes care of all the things you need to accomplish before the big event. After you have done the tasks scheduled in the time frame, you could start writing your “thank you” cards and have them sent a month after the wedding, but make sure it won’t take you more than three months to finish this.

Tags: preparing for a wedding, Stationery, wedding invitations timeline, wedding plans