Question about Announcements

I posted yesterday on Brides Helping and was hoping I could get a little more advise from the ladies here.

I live OOS but grew up on LI. All of my extended family is still there. We are having a small destination wedding so most will not be invited to the wedding. I do want to let them know about it though.

It was suggested that I send an announcement. When would I send that? Would I send it now, when I send out the STD's? What do I say...hey we're getting married?

I have to pick up some kind of etiquette book on all this. It's making my head spin.

if it's just an announcement, then I would send it out now to those people you want to let know about the engagement. Don't put the wedding date or anything on it. Just a picture of yourselves and the date of the engagement.

STDs are generally only sent to those people who you are going to be sending a formal invitation to. That's why these are sent out anywhere from 8-12 months before the wedding because you guest list would most likely be completed by then and you can send them out to those people on the guest list only.

I had a similar issue. Most of my family is spread out and never met FH and since we're not getting married for a while, I didn't want to send STD's out right away but I wanted to send SOMETHING... espcially since we aren't having an engagement party either.

I looked all over for etiquette regarding engagement announcements... the only things I found referred to announcements in newspapers, which wasn't what I wanted. Not practical when everyone is spread out.

Also, there are very few engagement announcement commercially available.

I finally gave up and decided to send whatever I wanted ans screw etiquette because the etiquette doesn't seem to exist.

What FH and I did was choose an STD that could be changed to be an engagement announcement. W picked something not too wedding-y and that was able to be free formed with whatever message we wanted. Look in my album for the result I think we did it quite tastefully.

Good luck. This was a real PITA, I swear.

And I would recommend deciding if you're having an e-partty first before you definitely decide to do this.

ETA: we got our 'announcements' (converted STD's) from Shesaidyesannouncements.com. Price was excellent and we were very happy with the results.

Since your having a destination wedding and most people won't be attending I would just send out an announcement towards the early part of 2010. I would send out STD about two-three months BEFORE your wedding for an AFTER PARTY invitation after you guys return from your wedding and/or honeymoon. That way those who won't be attending your wedding can still celebrate your union.