Can you send save the dates by text or email?

Is texting a save the date rude?

No. A save the date carries one piece of news, the date, and the formal part comes later with the invitation. The Emily Post Institute's advice on wedding email calls email "a great way to send an informal note to friends and relatives to put the date aside," and gives a simple test: if you'd be comfortable inviting someone over the phone, email is acceptable. By the same test, a text to someone you already text is fine too.

Plenty of couples who mail paper already send guests to a link. The Knot's 2023 Real Weddings Study, which surveyed 9,318 US couples married that year, found 38% put QR codes on their save the dates and invitations for RSVPs or the wedding website, up from 18% in 2022. If an older relative would rather have a card, mail them one. If you're still deciding whether to send save the dates at all, start with do you need save the dates.

Should you text it, email it or use WhatsApp?

Text the people you already text. Email works for coworkers, your parents' friends and anyone you'd never normally message, where a text from an unknown number would look like spam.

WhatsApp suits the guests who are already on it with you, not the whole list. Pew Research Center's survey of US adults, run from February to June 2025, found 32% use WhatsApp, up from 23% in 2021, so about two in three American adults don't use it.

What should the text say?

A line or two of your own above the link, written the way you'd normally talk to that person, sent from your own number or email address. One message to each guest or household reads better than a single group text, especially when the list mixes family, college friends and work. A group thread is quicker, but everyone in it sees the date, so make sure nobody's in there you aren't inviting.

If the link is a Save Our Date page, a text or chat message shows a picture of your card, and guests open it in their browser with nothing to download. With The Letter you can make a separate link for each guest, so the envelope arrives on screen with their name on it. For step-by-step instructions in each app, see how to send a save the date.

Who should still get a card in the mail?

Anyone who doesn't live on their phone, and anyone you know would like something for the fridge. Pew Research Center's mobile fact sheet, from its February to June 2025 survey, shows 78% of Americans 65 and older own a smartphone, compared with 90% or more in every younger age group. Pew also found 90% of adults 65 and older used the internet in 2025, so most are online, but ask rather than guess.

From a Save Our Date edit page you can print the same card at no extra cost on US Letter paper, either as cards to mail or as small cards with a QR code that opens the page. The invitation is a separate piece. Emily Post's view is that, because a wedding invitation is personal, it's preferable to send each guest a printed one unless the circumstances are really unusual. Save the date vs. invitation covers what goes on each.

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