There are a few strategies you can implement to get Wedding RSVPs more quickly. A few of them include when you send invitations, how the invitation is written, and additional forms of inviting guests that will support the invites.
Timing Your Invitations
The best practice is to send out your wedding RSVPs 6 months before your wedding, preferably sooner. The key is to send them with enough time for guests to make a decision and arrangements to attend. But you also don’t want your guests to have too much time before the wedding because the invitation will get lost in the everyday shuffle of mail, other events, and just life. So, if you can find the best date somewhere in the 9-month to 6-month mark it will help your guests and it will also help you to get responses more quickly.
Factor in things like travel costs of travel and scheduling around other events is also important. For example, if you know that you will have a fall or winter wedding, you will get much quicker responses if you schedule around the holidays and give your guests enough time to schedule around personal family time. If you have your wedding in more traditional wedding months such as March through May, you can typically stick to a more set date of 6 months from the wedding to send out RSVPs. The less competition you have with other events the more settled your date can be that you want to send out those RSVPs.
WritingYour Invitations
This may be the most important factor in getting your wedding RSVPs more quickly. You want to be clear in your invite as well as additional information.
Be very clear and direct about options such as plus ones. If you are not allowing plus ones for some reason, don’t include that information. If you are, include exactly how many are permitted and their food preferences. Making the RSPV easy to respond to in a matter of minutes will encourage people to get their invitations back in the mail back to you as soon as possible. If you can avoid it, another helpful practice is to not include anything else in the envelope beside the invitation.
If you can keep your invitation simple with only the response in one card to send back to you that will help make things easier for guests and they are more likely to send them back sooner. The info. that you want to know is whether they are attending, bringing a plus one, and their dietary preferences. It’s recommended to ask for other details in other spaces or through your wedding planner again to make things as simple as possible and increase your likelihood of getting wedding RSVPs more quickly.
Other Ways to Invite Them
In addition to sending paper wedding invites in the mail, you can also use other measures such as posting on social media. Even if you don’t want to put wedding invitations online for people to respond to, you can use social media to inform guests of your wedding plans. One creative way to do this is to either send messages or post something only visible to certain people.
That way you can use this method of communication without leaving anyone out who sees the post on your friends list. Rather, make it private and remind everyone you have access to through social media that you would like to invite to the wedding. People often need multiple reminders before responding to invitations. Using social media simply provides an alternative medium and will help you to get wedding RSVPs more quickly.
Don’t Be Afraid to Pick Up The Phone
Although it may not fit within all of the etiquette rules, sometimes you may just need to pick up the phone and text or call the guest to ask if they are coming to the wedding. Of course, this is not something that you’ll need to do if you are missing a handful of invites. But if you are, for example, missing 10 RSVPs and you need to make decisions about catering and finish your orders, you should feel empowered to follow up directly about your guest’s plans.
Always be kind and let them know the reason that you’re following up. And don’t present this as them owing you a count but rather that you would love to include them in this very special day and that’s the reason you would like to know if they are attending. This will go a long way in making them feel special.
Leave a Reply