My Wedding Planning Nightmare

Literally.

I had a horrible dream last night that Seth's leave dates were moved up by an enormous amount of time, and therefore our wedding date was moved up by the enormous amount of time. This left me completely unprepared, and although I had my dress, I had NONE of the fun little details of the wedding planned. In my dream nightmare, I was running around and making little appetizers for the reception and I was literally screaming at people to do this and that for me. I was a total bridezilla in my dream nightmare. For the record, I am not one in real life. I had these little bite sized bread things that I put pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese on, and they needed to be heated up, and the cheese needed to be melted. So I put them out in the sun to melt the cheese. (Normal to cook something under the sun, right?) Then the sun wasn't melting the cheese fast enough and I was getting even more mad. Then I tripped on one of the pans of these and 1/2 of the little things fell down a random hole that was in the middle of the lawn. I was demanding people run to the store for me, to get me assorted items, and then they came back with only a few of what I asked for. I was mad my mom didn't make potato salad. I didn't have an officiant, and I didn't know who was going to marry us. I think I demanded someone take an online course REAL QUICKLY so they would be qualified to marry us.

Needless to say, it was a horrible dream nightmare. I admit I've taken a little break from planning, because I've been really busy at work. But this dream nightmare scared me back into planning mode and I shall not waste anymore time. Our wedding isn't until July of next year, but I need to work on the save the dates (yeah, we've been engaged since December and I still haven't gotten those finished). I have the draft of them, we just need to finalize the guest list (which I'll probably have to do with his parents). Also, we're discussing if we want to have a small ceremony, and a big reception, or if the same people should be invited to the ceremony and reception?

I need advice:

1. If you sent out save the dates, how far in advance did you send them out?
2. How far in advance did you send out the wedding invitations?
3. Did you have a small ceremony and big reception? If so, how did you word the invitations for this?

(Also, for what it's worth, our ceremony and reception will be at the same location).