"Save the date"

[chimera57]

I just got another invitation with the phrase “Save the date!” prominently displayed. Every time I see this weird construction (how does one “save” a point in time?) I’m puzzled, because I’m 99 percent positive I didn’t see “save the date” until a few years ago.

Is it just me? Have people been putting “save the date” on invitations for decades (or centuries), and I just didn’t notice it until recently? And if it IS a recent phenomenon, where did it come from?

[Hampshire]

I have no idea where they came from but I’ve been seeing them more and more lately for weddings. You get a very basic “save the date” memo or refrigerator magnet about 8-9 months before the wedding and then a real formal invitation a month or so before the wedding.

[Kent_Clark]

It comes from a distorted reading of etiquette that feels the “proper” time to send an invitation is no more than 30 days in advance of an event. To make sure you don’t double-book the evening, get the early air fare discount, etc., someone came up with a pre-invitation that serves the same purpose as a formal invitation.

The first time I ran across it was in college, when my old high-school buddies started getting married, so it’s been going on for several decades.

[h.sapiens]

I believe the practice is borrowed from larger events like annual fundraisers for charitable organizations. They like to give their donors more advance notice of the upcoming event, but it isn’t considered proper or practical to send the official invitation that long before the actual date. The “Save the Date” is usually just a postcard, a kind of announcement that the event will be taking place without the added information, order form for tickets/tables, etc.

It probably was picked up for weddings when “destination weddings” started to become popular, because people now have to plan to make more than one day available, and need extra notice to make travel plans and so forth.

[Anaamika]

@h.sapiens

I believe the practice is borrowed from larger events like annual fundraisers for charitable organizations.

Bingo.

Here’s the deal. I work in a not-for-profit, so I know.

You’re trying to sell the event to sponsors. So you can sell your big, presenting sponsor a place on the save the date card. Then you send them out, and part of what you’re hoping for is companies will say “xyz company is in, we should get in too.”

Then you want to sell space on your invites to a bunch more sponsors…so you wait until the 3-4 weeks before to send your invites, and put as many sponsors as you can on them. It’s part of their package for giving us money.

[chimera57]

Okay, I understand the need to alert people to some far-future event prior to a formal invitation, and the whole fundraiser/sponsor thing.

But my question is … is this peculiar phrase “save the date” a recent creation? My theory is that up until about 5 years ago, the phrase people used was “mark your calendars.” At some point it became “save the date.” I’m not talking about the practice of pre-invitations, but the phrase itself.

[Ludovic]

All’s I’m saying is I’m not a fan of its acronym.

[Gordon_Urquhart]

@Ludovic

All’s I’m saying is I’m not a fan of its acronym.

I work in a not-for-profit that sends out save-the-date postcards and e-mails, and it’s always great fun to say to my colleagues, “Say, did you get that STD yet?”

[Miss_Woodhouse]

“Save the Date” is a pretty recent thing around these parts. I do understand why people send the cards, friends and family memebers are more spread out than they used to be, but aren’t most of the friends and family members who would travel long distances for a wedding also close enough emotionally to be in telephone contact? It just seems superflous.

[Keeve]

@chimera57

But my question is … is this peculiar phrase “save the date” a recent creation? My theory is that up until about 5 years ago, the phrase people used was “mark your calendars.” At some point it became “save the date.” I’m not talking about the practice of pre-invitations, but the phrase itself.

I got that from the beginning. I don’t know why everyone is continuing to respond to a question you didn’t ask.

I’ve seen and used this phrase for at least 30 years. I suspect it might be a variation of “reserve the date”.

[Gary_T]

@chimera57

Every time I see this weird construction (how does one “save” a point in time?)…

Have you never heard the phrase “save some time for [whatever],” meaning plan to have some time available in the future? I’ve heard that commonly, and “save the date” seems a rather natural and logical extension of it.

[KneadToKnow]

@Gordon Urquhart

“Say, did you get that STD yet?”

“No, but if you’ve got it, I’ll take my chances!”

[Kimstu]

@chimera57

My theory is that up until about 5 years ago, the phrase people used was “mark your calendars.” At some point it became “save the date.” I’m not talking about the practice of pre-invitations, but the phrase itself.

No, as Keeve noted, it’s definitely a lot older than that. A news archive search turned up a dozen or so examples just from the year 1950:

Jan. 23, San Mateo Times: “Peninsula Gclf and Country club members have been warned to “save The DATE” of February 11 for Valentine breakfast DANCE.”

June 11, Long Beach Press-Telegram: “A Date was Set for the Christmas party and Mrs. Arthur Dine! asked the club to save the Date, October 21, for the Opti-Mrs. big project of the Year.”

November 30, Penn Yan (NY) Chronicle-Express: “WON’T YOU please SAVE the date to join us on Dec. 19”

I think the only reason you’re seeing so much more of it nowadays is because of the craze for “pre-invitations”.

@kunilou

It comes from a distorted reading of etiquette that feels the “proper” time to send an invitation is no more than 30 days in advance of an event.

I wouldn’t call it “distorted”, just somewhat old-fashioned. (And even in the old days, four to six weeks in advance was considered an appropriate timeframe for sending wedding invitations.)

Now that so many people travel long distances to go to weddings, and so many people have tight work schedules that require them to plan their time off far in advance, it makes sense to give more advance notice on invitations.

It can be carried too far, though. An amusing article:

There it is. Addressed personally to you, but not quite glamorous looking enough to be a formal invitation. What could it be? Tada! It’s a “Save the Date” notice. […]

“It’s invitation by intimidation,” he said. “Instead of notifying you about an event the normal six weeks in advance, these save-the-date people feel compelled to impose on you six months in advance. Why do they do that?” […]

So how did we get into this save-the-date overdrive anyway, when the latest editions of “Emily Post’s Etiquette” and “Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette” still advise that even the most formal of invitations go out only six weeks in advance?

Marcy Blum, a New York party planner who wrote “Weddings for Dummies” with Laura Fisher Kaiser, has watched these save-the-date mailings go from rare to standard in just three years. Ms. Blum thinks it’s because weddings that used to take place in one afternoon or evening have expanded into full weekends, often in destinations that require advance travel booking.

“If you’re having a party where most of your friends and family are nearby, sending a save-the-date is preposterous,” she said. “On the other hand, now that people think their parties are the be all and end all of everything, what else can you expect?”

My feeling is that the practice has grown partly because guests have become so unreliable about responding to regular invitations or showing up to an event that they’ve accepted an invitation for. Hosts are trying to nail guests down into actually making a cast-iron social commitment of the sort that used to be taken for granted; when you accepted an invitation to go to a wedding or a dinner party or whatever, it was understood that you would definitely be there, barring a real emergency. Now, a lot of guests seem to think that any acceptance of any invitation is provisional, and if they turn out to be busy or tired when the event rolls around they needn’t bother to show up.