One of the most sticky wedding invitation ettiquette situations is when to send the wedding invitations. Too late, and you won’t be able to nail down your final wedding guest list and create the wedding reception seating chart. If you send the wedding invitations out too soon, your guests may lose track of your invitation, and forget to RSVP for your wedding at all.

Here are some wedding invitation ettiquette rules of thumb, to make the most of your wedding invitations.

• For local weddings, you should send out wedding invitations six to eight weeks before your wedding day. Your RSVP date should be set to two to three weeks before your wedding, respectively.
• If you have a lot of out of town wedding guests, or if you are having a destination wedding, consider mailing out your wedding invitations eight to ten weeks before your wedding to give your guests plenty of time to make travel arrangements.
• Alternatively, you can still send out your affordable wedding invitations at six to eight weeks, provided that you send save the date cards well in advance. These can be sent out as soon as you are sure about the date and location of your wedding day.
• A common bit of wedding lore is to send your wedding invitations on a Thursday, so your wedding guests will receive the wedding invitations over the weekend. This is supposed to ensure that they will be more likely to respond, without the hassles of the work week to interfere.

What other wedding invitation ettiquette questions do you have? What deadlines do you plan to use for your wedding?

Kimberlee Ferrell is the Wedding Correspondent for Beautiful Wedding Invitations.