Getting your guests to RSVP can be an unwanted headache. You’ve sent out your invitations in plenty of time and the last thing you want to be doing with your weekends and evenings is chasing up people who can’t be bothered to reply!

We’ve picked up a thing or two during the 10 years we’ve been creating beautiful wedding stationery, and here, we give you our top four tips to encourage a speedy reply from your guests.

TIP 1: Don’t give them too much time! 

Allow around six weeks from the time you send out your invitations – any more and you give your guests the perception that they can ‘do it later’.

Invitations tend to be sent out around 4-6 months before your wedding, but don’t be tempted to put a reply date on that gives your guests the luxury of time. When we got married, our venue required final and confirmed numbers around three weeks before our wedding date. Some people use this date from their venue to establish their RSVP date.

Don’t!

Just because your venue doesn’t need to know final numbers until around a month before, it doesn’t mean that you should pass that date on to your guests. You need to give yourself time to chase up any stragglers and you don’t want to be stressed out as the confirmation date for your venue approaches.

Our suggestion is about six weeks after your invitations are sent out. This gives your guests a sense of urgency whilst also giving them time to make any decisions they may need to.

The exception for this is of course where there is lots of travel involved, for example if you’re getting married abroad or you have lots of guests travelling from abroad. In this instance, you may want to allow a little more time, but again – don’t give your guests the luxury of months and months to make their plans as replying to you will drop to the bottom of their ‘to-do’ list. With the best of intentions, they’ll look at a reply date which expires in over six months time and think ‘I’ll deal with that later’. 8-10 weeks should give your guests ample time to look into travel arrangements and decide whether they are able to attend your Big Day or not.

Whenever you send our your invites, always avoid (if you can) giving a reply date that falls into the next year as the perception of time leaves your guests thinking they have ages to act on your request for a response.

TIP 2: Include a reply card

Let’s face it, life is busy. Your guests will have plenty going on in their own lives and they may have the best of intentions in getting back to you, but when life happens, it slips out of their mind.

Including a reply card makes it quick and easy for your guests to communicate their attendance with you without having to go out and buy a special card.

Many of our invitations come with a reply card included and as we offer the printing of guest names and addresses free of charge, your guest’s name will be pre-printed leaving them with the simple job of ticking a box. We also include a postal envelope pre-printed with your return address to make it literally the easiest of jobs for your guests. You could consider adding a postage stamp to the reply card envelope as well to leave your guests literally no excuse, but just consider whether this is potentially wasted money if guests wish to hand deliver.

Including a reply card also has the added advantage of ensuring you receive ALL of the information you need from your guests. For example, if you need to know dietary requirements, you can include a line asking for this information. If you need to know menu choices, you can tailor your reply card to gather this information. If you ask the questions but leave it for your guests to respond to you of their own free will, you’re unlikely to get the answers you want!

For more ideas of how you can use your reply card to gather information from your guests, see our blog post “Six Potential Questions To Ask On Your Reply Card”.

Essentially, the easier you make it for your guests, the more likely you are to get speedy responses.

TIP 3: Give your guests more than one way to respond

This can be a useful tactic and is especially useful if you have a generational spread amongst your guests.

For example, your grandparents are unlikely to reply via a website or email, but would most likely return a reply card. Your cousin in their early twenties probably hasn’t had much experience with snail mail, but is likely to be able to send an email faster than they can clean their teeth in the morning! Providing an email address as well as a phone number in addition to a reply card, can hugely enhance your chances of getting a reply.

Remember… the easier you make it for your guests, the more likely you are to get speedy responses.

However, a word of caution… Although it’s about making your guests’ lives as easy as possible, don’t do it to the detriment of an easy life for you!

Keeping on top of replies via one method is, in the word of the Meerkats, Simples… but introducing more than one method has the potential of becoming a little complicated. Just have a think before offering multiple options whether it will make your life easier, or more complicated.

TIP 4: Finish with a friendly or humorous threat!
A trend that has been coming in of late is to remind your guests that without their reply, you will assume they are not coming and will therefore not cater for them. We’ve seen playful wording like “if we haven’t heard from you by [date], please bring a chair and a sandwich”

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to guarantee a reply from everyone but hopefully, using these four top tips will help make your lives a lot easier than having to stalk the postman as your reply date approaches!