Guests need four things: what is happening when, what to wear to each of it, how to get here, and what the visa requires. Everything else is decoration, and putting everything else in is why nobody reads it.
Send it in two parts
The save the date carries the visa note and the dates. That is all, and it goes out six months ahead so people can apply and book.
The full pack goes with the formal invitation, eight to twelve weeks out. Schedule, dress notes per event, travel, accommodation, transfers and a contact.
Dress notes matter more than you think
Guests flying from London to a four day wedding are packing for four outfits in a suitcase with a weight limit, in a climate they have not checked. Tell them the colour for the Haldi, tell them the Sangeet is formal, and tell them the evenings are cold in November.
And tell them about the ground. A Mehndi with floor seating in a courtyard is not a stiletto event, and nobody thanks you for finding that out on the day.
One named contact
A person, an email and a WhatsApp number, printed on the pack. Not the couple. Not the mother of the bride.
Without it every question in the list goes to the family, and the family is doing something else that week.
What goes in the first document
The save the date carries five things and nothing else: the dates, the city, a line telling Indian passport holders they will need a visa, the hotel block with its booking link, and the release date after which those rooms go back.
That release date is the reason this document exists eight months early rather than four. Guests book flights when they know the rooms are real, and they lose the block rate if they are told in the invitation.
Add one sentence on who is paying for what. Families handle it differently and all of them are fine, but ambiguity means guests book nothing while they wait to find out.
| Save the date | The full pack | |
|---|---|---|
| When | Eight to nine months out | Eight to ten weeks out |
| Carries | Dates, city, visa warning, hotel block, release date | The schedule, dress per event, transport, contacts, the city |
| Job | Get flights and rooms booked before they get expensive | Stop three hundred people asking the same four questions |
| Length | One screen. Anything longer is not read | As long as it needs, because by now they want it |
What goes in the second, and what to leave out
The full pack carries the schedule with times and locations, what to wear to each event, how transport works and from where, the weather they should actually expect, and the numbers to call.
Leave out anything that will change. A draft schedule circulated at ten weeks and revised twice teaches three hundred people to ignore your emails, and the version they print is always the first one.
Leave out the family politics, the seating, and anything about money beyond who pays for rooms. And leave out the registry, which at a wedding where everybody has bought a flight is a conversation for somebody else.