The Basics

RSVPs: Your Guide To Wedding RSVPs

You’ve set the date and found your location, now it’s time to find out who’s coming!

Having a handle on your guest list, and who’s attending, is important for table planning, catering and overall venue numbers. Plus, you might have a ‘B-List’ of guests who will be invited if others can’t attend (we won’t tell them they are B-Listers if you don’t!)

Read our guide will help to make collecting RSVPs a little easier, or skip straight to tips on what to do when people don’t respond.

Our RSVP Guide

Using our online RSVP function takes the legwork out of one of the most tedious parts of wedding organisation. Collecting RSVPs, recording them, and chasing them up, takes a long time and requires strong attention to detail. With our upgrade, you can ask guests to RSVP via your wedding website, and connect their responses to your GettingMarried guest list.

Here are our essential tips for making your life easier when it comes to collecting RSVPS:

Give Yourself Extra Time

Want three months notice from your guests? Then ask for four. That buys you much-needed extra time for chasing up any missing RSVPs and organising invitations for extra guests.

Keep Track Of Your Guests

This sounds obvious, but when you have 50+ guests including children and +1’s, it can get a little complicated to remember who’s received invitations, who’s RSVP’d, and stuff like menu choices and dietary requirements.

Using an online Guest List (we’ve heard GettingMarried has the best one…) can make it easier to pull together your list, keep a track of who’s received invitations and who’s responded. If you’re planning to use email stationery, upgrade to GM+ and your Guest List will track who you’ve sent invitations to and monitor RSVPs from your guests.

Make It Obvious

Guests may only skim-read your invitation when it first arrives, so make your RSVP deadline crystal clear. If you’re using a wedding website (we hope you are!), you can add a text block about your RSVP deadline wherever you think guests are most likely to see it.

Ask About Everything

Yes, you need to know if they are coming, but you also probably need dietary requirements and maybe menu choices too. When asking your guests to RSVP, make sure you collect any additional information you need too. You don’t want to find out they’re bringing a +1 the week before the wedding!

Make It Easy

The easier it is to RSVP, the more likely you are to get quick responses from your guests. Let’s be honest, finding a stamp to post an RSVP can be a pain, but using your wedding website to collect RSVPs is much easier… 

You can collect RSVPs via your wedding website, find out about the different options here. 

You could also include a RSVP card, envelope and stamp with each invitation, taking most of the legwork out of paper RSVPs (for your guests anyway!)

Chasing Wedding RSVPs

No matter how wonderful and well meaning your guests are, we can guarantee that some of them will forget to let you know whether they can make it!

If you’re still waiting for guests to RSVP, here are a few of our tips:

Send Reminders

The majority of guests RSVP within 5 weeks of receiving invitations, so if it’s been longer than that it’s likely to have slipped their mind. 

Send a follow-up email using Guest Emails (part of GM Essentials for £45) to remind them, and include a link to your wedding website to make it really easy for them to reply. A text or phone call will also work, just remember to update your guest list when they respond!

We recommend either sending the reminder a few days before your RSVP deadline, or a week or two afterwards; the choice is yours.

Update Your Wedding Website

In the run up to your wedding, guests will be checking your website to remind themselves of the details of your big day.

Take advantage of this and update your website with a RSVP reminder towards the top- you can even include a link to easy RSVP to email their reply, so they’ve got no excuse not to reply!

Ask Other Questions

Obviously everyone is excited about your big day, but RSVPing still feels like a chore. 

Ask them another question- a more exciting one like ‘We want your song recommendations’ or ‘Let us know what you’d like to drink!’- and hopefully this will give them an indirect nudge to respond.

You can use Guest Emails to send an email about anything, or a round-robin text or WhatsApp works too.

Get Help

From your bridesmaids, parents, groomsmen or anyone else close to the planning of your wedding. 

Let’s face it, you’ve got enough on your plate without chasing up your Auntie Carol for a third time. Ask those close to you to chase up RSVPs on your behalf, so you can focus on something else.

Say No! (If You Want To)

The other reason why you might not have a solid response from your guests, is because they’ve asked you a question. These are usually “Can I bring a +1?” “Can my child come?” or “Can we stay?”

Obviously, you can say yes if you want to! But don’t worry about saying no. It’s your day, and usually if they are asking it’s because it’s not part of their invitation. A polite “we’d love to cater to everyone’s requirements, but I’m afraid we have to say no” is completely okay.