What’s the point of a Save the Date card?

Save the Dates are not always necessary. They have specific purposes for people who need to give advance notice to their guests.

They are important for people who have a lot of out-of-state, out-of-country, or just basically long-distance guests to invite. You want to warn your guests so they can save money and make the travel arrangements.

They are also important for a couple getting married on a national holiday. People plan their family vacations many months (sometimes a year) in advance. You would need to warn your guests if you are planning your wedding on a long weekend or holiday so they know in advance that they should not make other holiday vacation plans. For example, if you are getting married on Memorial Day Weekend, you would want to send Save the Dates 10-12 months in advance so people don't make other vacation plans for that weekend and end up having to miss your wedding.

Lol I felt the same way!! We ended up doing them because a lot of our family live out of state and we wanted to give them a heads up so they could plan for flights. The STD’s are usually vague, only date and destination. The invited have them specific details and website (if you have one)

Save the dates aren't typically a necessity. They're sent to let people know to reserve that date because they will be invited to your wedding. It's important for out of town guests or destination weddings where people need to make accommodations far in advance. RSVPs cannot be sent with save the dates as they're sent out 6-8 months before the wedding and that's much too early for your guests to give you a final yes or no answer.

Like said before STD is useful for families and guests who travel and will need advanced notice to be able to attend a wedding, a STD is sent 12-8 months in advanced for that reason. An invite is sent 6-3 months in advanced to get an actual head count.
If you don't have a lot of guests, or nobody is traveling you could just call everyone and tell them the date in advanced if you don't want to buy the papers and postage.

I'm doing it because is a week day and some family members have to take off from work, hence I'm sending them STD's 6 months before the day so that they can make arrangements

STDs are more or less an announcement that you are getting married. They aren't necessary. It's just a way to ensure your intended guests have plenty of notice, so they can plan ahead. The RSVP should still be included with your invitation only, because this is closer to your date and the invite will have all of the details / wedding information guests need. STDs only have the date and city.

I just ordered new save the dates because our old venue burnt down so now it’s in a different town and on a Friday night in December. I wanted to send one (well now 2) because it’s close to he holidays and I want people to know my date before accepting invitations to holiday parties/going out of town/etc

Hey!
Just a heads up to those important guests that you want at your wedding to save the date for you
Just in case they need to take off work or need to schedule things around your date.
It's a good reminder.

AS PP have said you don't need to do STDs. They are just a notice to your guests about the date you have chosen to get married so they can plan ahead. For example, we sent ours because we have family that likes to go on vacation around the time we chose to get married so we wanted to make sure they knew the date before planning their vacations.

We skipped save the dates because we felt they were silly. All of our VIP guests knew our date, so we didn't find them to be necessary.

To save money we called all our guests or told them in person that way we could catch up with them as well. We have many people coming from out of town and wanted them to have advanced notice for travel arrangements.

It's basically letting people know to plan on your wedding that day so they don't plan anything else, prior to sending out invites which typically go out 2-4 months out. For us, it was a nice way to let out of state guests know to plan on the travel. 6-12 months out is too far in advance to ask people to RSVP.

They're not necessary. You can even do it as an email, if anything to save money. I think they're just like an announcement

Save The Dates are great for if you have quite a few out of town/state/country guests who will need to make strenuous travel arrangements, for guests who have to ask for days/time off WAY in advance, if you're doing a destination or several-days-long wedding that will require extra planning than just popping in after work or running across town to the venue on a Saturday night.

View Quoted Comment Oh my god, that sounds horrible! Talk about things going wrong

I agree that STD's are never necessary. We didn't use them, and if i'm close enough to get invited to a wedding, i generally know when it's happening before I get the STD and then just throw it away.

Some ppl like them specifically for out of town guests, but i know many people wouldn't buy plane tix or anything without having a formal invite anyway.

No harm in sending if you like them - but super unnecessary if you don't.

Most of our guests are traveling, so they were necessary for us. If you have mostly locals, you probably don't need them but for any weddings with travel, they are pretty necessary.