Most people treat the RSVP as a wording problem. It is really a deadline problem. The wording takes ten minutes; getting the last fifteen households to answer takes six weeks, and the date you put on the card is what decides whether that happens before or after your caterer needs the numbers.
What the card has to do
Whatever style you write in, an RSVP has five jobs. Miss any one of them and you will be having the conversation again by phone.
- Say who is invited, by name. "The Pascoe family" is how you get four unexpected teenagers; naming everyone is how you avoid it.
- Say what they are replying to - the whole day, or the evening. If your invitation has a day and an evening version, the RSVP has to make clear which one this household has.
- Give one deadline, as a date, written out. Not "as soon as you can".
- Give exactly one way to reply, and make it the easiest one you are willing to receive.
- Ask for what you will otherwise have to chase separately - names of those attending, and dietary requirements or a meal choice.
Wording you can copy
| Tone | Wording |
|---|---|
| Formal | The favour of a reply is requested by the 3rd of April 2027. M___ accepts / regrets. Please indicate any dietary requirements. |
| Relaxed | Please let us know by 3 April 2027. Tell us who is coming, and anything you cannot eat. |
| Online only | RSVP by 3 April 2027 at the link below - one reply per household covers everyone on your invitation. |
Two phrases to avoid. "RSVP if you can make it" produces silence from everyone who cannot, and you will never know whether they are coming or lost the card. "Adults only, no children" on the RSVP is too late and reads as a telling-off - the children policy belongs on the invitation or on your wedding website, worded as who is invited rather than who is not.
Setting the deadline: work backwards
Your caterer has a date by which they need final numbers - usually two to three weeks before the day, and it will be in your contract. Everything else is counted back from there:
- Caterer's final-numbers date - find it in the contract, do not assume it.
- Two weeks before that: your RSVP deadline. That fortnight is the chasing window, and you will need all of it.
- Six to eight weeks before the deadline: invitations go out. Any less and people genuinely have not decided; any more and the card gets put in a drawer.
- Eight to twelve months out: save the dates, if you are having them. A save the date is not an RSVP and should never ask for one.
Set the deadline before a weekend, not after
A Friday deadline gets you a weekend of replies from people who meant to do it and did not. A Monday deadline gets you the same replies, three days late, and no way to tell a straggler from someone who is simply slow.
Chasing the ones who never reply
Expect roughly a third of your households to miss the deadline. It is not rudeness - a wedding invitation arrives in a month when nobody knows what they are doing in April. Plan for it instead of being annoyed by it.
- Chase by the channel that household actually uses. A text to someone who has not opened an email in a decade is not nagging, it is the only way you will get an answer.
- Chase households, not people - one message to whoever holds the invitation covers everyone under it.
- Give a hard second date, and say what happens after it: "we have to give final numbers on the 17th, so we will have to count you as unable to come".
- Then actually do that. Counting an unreplied household as attending is how you pay for eight covers nobody eats.
- Keep a list of who you have chased and when. By week two you will not remember.
Cards, links, or both
A printed reply card with a stamped envelope still gets the highest response rate from guests over about sixty, and the lowest from everyone else. An online reply gets you the data in a form you can actually count, instantly, with the dietary requirements attached to the right person. The best answer for most weddings is both: a posted invitation carrying a link or a QR code, so the household picks whichever it finds easier and you get one structured answer either way.
Doing it on Plan My Do
Every household on your guest list gets its own RSVP link. One person opens it and answers for everyone on the invitation, including the questions you have set - main course, dietary requirements, whether they need accommodation. You can send those links by email, or print them: an A6 card per household, four to a sheet of ordinary A4, each carrying a QR code and the address written out underneath for anyone who would rather type it. One caveat worth knowing before you print: reprinting a household's card issues a new link and stops the old one working, so print the envelope stuffing in one go rather than in dribs.
Set the RSVP deadline on the list and you can switch on reminders, which chase only the households that still owe you an answer - twice, at fourteen days and three days before the deadline, and never on the deadline day itself or after it. A list with no deadline set never sends one. The rest of the chasing is a filter: show the households that have not yet replied, and work down it.
Whatever comes back, it lands in the same place as the rest of your numbers - see collecting dietary requirements and meal choices for the half your caterer is waiting on, and the twelve-month timeline for where the invitation run sits against everything else.
See how the guest list and RSVP tracker works for the per-household RSVP page, printable cards and the reminders themselves.
Send it once, chase it automatically
Per-household RSVP links, printable cards with QR codes, and reminders that only chase the people who have not replied.
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