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Wedding dates to avoid in 2018, 2019, and beyond
I'm compiling this list of wedding dates to avoid in 2018, 2019, and 2020 in case you want to avoid holidays where family and friends... Read more
It was super tempting to start this post as “email STD warning!” But I decided to be good and go with something more clear and less risqué. My partner and I decided to send out email save-the-dates instead of a physical card. We decided to go this route since we're more tech-y and less formal. Plus, I got to design a little graphic, which is always my preference.
I do, however, have a warning for you if you are planning on going the green route with your save-the-date by sending out electronic ones. If you send an email with an image, you may hit your guests' spam folders or run into a couple of other issues. Here are some pros and cons of going green with your save-the-dates and how you can avoid your save-the-date going to spam…
Pitfalls of an emailed save-the-date:
- Your guests' emails address might not be up to date
- Your email might hit spam folders
- Guests may not remember to add the date to their calendar without a visual reminder
Benefits of an emailed save-the-date:
- A greener option since it uses no paper
- You can potentially save some cash by designing it yourself
- You can respond to initial questions right away
- You can link to your wedding website with more information
It's your call on whether or not you think the pros outweigh the cons. I mean, even a paper save-the-date can get lost in the mail or be forgotten in a pile.
I ultimately chose to create an embedded graphic to slide into an email and simply BCCed my guests. Unfortunately, though, while we had double checked all of the email addresses and they were correct, a fair few of them hit spam folders. Thankfully, my guest list is on the smaller side so it was easy to email/text anyone who hadn't mentioned it yet to check their spam folders and we now know everyone at least saw it.
Here are some tricks to avoid your email save-the-date going to spam:
- Embed any images instead of attaching them
- Don't use any weird characters ($%# etc.) in the subject line and keep it short (under 45 characters).
- If your guest list is really long and you'd rather avoid checking with everyone to make sure they received it, consider an online save-the-date company like Greenvelope which often allow tracking and show whether or not someone has seen the email and opened it.
Ultimately, I was super happy with the response to our emailed save-the-date. I don't think anyone was surprised that we chose that route and SO many of our guests have already visited the wedding website, booked hotels, RSVPed online, got some questions answered, etc. It was great to have such an immediate response.
Who else sent an emailed save-the-date? Did you run into any issues?
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About the Author: Catherine Clark
Catherine Clark loiters at her local library, makes art, watches movies en masse, plays video and tabletop games, poorly cooks healthy things, cuddles with her feline fur babies, and blogs at BijouxandBits.com.
Another potential pitfall not listed: a friend of mine had e-mail invites and another guest thoughtfully forwarded it to some friends that “were forgotten”. And yes, despite not being directly from the bride or groom these people thought they were invited. Ok for some, but not great if you’re trying to keep your wedding small, have limited space, etc.
Ahaha! The problems of a digital age…
Another way to potentially avoid the spam folder: don’t send the email to a huge list of addresses in the BCC field. Some filters will pick up on that format as spam. All of our invitation emails were received safely and part of that might be because I sent them to small groups of friends (say four or five) at a time, who knew each other so it didn’t matter about keeping email addresses private. Even if that meant sending loads of separate emails it’s just a copy-and-paste job, though obviously the larger the guest list, the more work – especially to make sure you don’t accidentally miss someone out.
Something else to try is putting in your save-the-date or invitation email a line explaining that you’re worried about the email accidentally being filtered into the spam folder, and could the recipient please let you know they received the email ASAP to set your mind at rest. This could backfire, with your inbox flooded with emails, but at least you’ll know who got your invitation!
I used Paperless Post and couldn’t be happier with the results. Not only was I able to create my own design (for free), but I was able to send follow-up emails to non-responders. I highly recommend this service!
Another potential pitfall we ran into: We set up a new Gmail account to send invites from, and when we then mail-merged out 50 emails (one part of our list) then another 50 emails (a second part of our list) the second round didn’t go out because we’d been flagged as a potential spammer (no email history!). There was a link to a form in the email messages I received when our second round of emails got blocked, and Google was pretty quick to resolve the issue once I explained using the form they provided (~12 hours). But that was NOT something I expected!
I sent some of my hybrid save the date / invites via email. Since the majority of our guests are out of town, we knew we had to send save the dates as soon as possible (I’m getting married next May). But when the time came to send them, we already had all the details for the invite ready, so we just sent a pretty casual invite.
We sent digital copies to all of our younger friends and cousins, and paper copies to grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, etc. Since our guest list was so small, I opted to just create my own email template and send it from my regular gmail account. I think it worked great and my guests have been really responsive. Most friends texted me as soon as they got it, and I checked up on people I hadn’t heard from to confirm receipt. So far I’ve been really happy with my choice.
I am going to send just paper copies