Planning a day in three months

Short notice weddings happen for every reason imaginable, and the planning advice written for an eighteen month engagement is actively unhelpful when you have twelve weeks.

The compressed version is not a smaller version of the same list. It is a different order.

Week one: the three things that unlock everything#

1. The date and the venue. Nothing can be decided before these, and at short notice availability decides both. Take what you can get and stop optimising
2. The number the room holds. This is your guest list, whether you like it or not
3. The guest list itself, written in one sitting. There is no time for three passes, so use the test in who you have to invite and accept the result

Week one, also: tell people#

This is the single most important compression. With three months, guests need to know now, before the invitation is designed, before the wording is agreed, before anything is final.

A message with the date and the words "invitation to follow" costs you nothing and buys back four weeks of notice. Send it the day the venue is confirmed.

Week two: the invitation goes out#

Not week six. Week two. Every week you spend perfecting it is a week taken off your guests notice, and notice is the only thing that actually affects attendance.

The decisions that have to be made before you can write it:

• Children or not. See children at weddings
• Plus ones. See plus one wording
• Dress code, in two words
• Gifts, in one sentence

Make all four in one conversation, write the invitation the same evening, and send it. Wedding invitation wording has the lines if you do not want to start from a blank page.

Why the format matters more at short notice#

Printing and posting costs you two to three weeks: proofs, a print run, addressing, the post itself, and the guest who moved house. At twelve weeks that is a quarter of your remaining time spent on delivery.

A link is sent the evening it is finished and is open on a hundred phones the same night. At short notice that is not a preference, it is most of the schedule. What each format really costs puts real numbers against both.

Set a short reply deadline and say why#

Three weeks, not six. Guests understand urgency when it is explained and they respond faster to a near deadline than a distant one.

We know this is short notice. Could you let us know by the ninth so we can give the venue numbers.

Then chase after ten days rather than waiting. The guests who never reply covers doing that without it becoming a job.

What to drop#

At three months, several things that feel compulsory are simply optional.

• Save the dates. Pointless. The invitation is the save the date
• A separate website. One document, all of it. See what goes where
• Printed menus, orders of service, place cards in calligraphy. None of this is remembered
• Three quotes for everything. Take the one that is available and good enough

What not to drop#

• The legal paperwork. Notice periods for marriage are fixed by law and are frequently the real constraint on a short engagement. Check yours in week one
• Photography. It is the only part of the day that survives it
• Food. Guests forgive almost everything except being hungry
• Telling anybody offline personally. See inviting the guests who are not online

Expect a lower turnout, and mind it less#

At three months notice you will lose some guests to holidays and other commitments, and there is nothing to be done about it. Assume a slightly higher decline rate than the figures in how many guests to invite, and invite accordingly.

Everyone who does come will be there because they moved something. That tends to make for a very good room.