How to collect RSVPs online without chasing anyone
Reply cards lose a third of your answers. What to ask, what to never ask, and the two changes that get most of a guest list to answer in a week.
6 min read
Chasing replies is the least enjoyable part of planning a wedding, and most of it is avoidable. Not by chasing better, but by removing the reasons people do not answer in the first place.
There are three, and they are all fixable.
Why guests do not reply#
Answering takes more than a moment. A reply card means finding a pen, finding a stamp and finding a postbox. Each step loses people. A form that takes fifteen seconds on the phone they are already holding loses almost nobody.
They are not sure of the answer yet. A guest waiting on a rota or a flight will put the invitation down and mean to come back. They rarely do.
They never saw it. A wrong address, a full inbox, a message read in a queue and forgotten. This is a bigger share than most couples believe.
What to ask#
Five things, and no more.
- Their name.
- Coming or not. One choice, two buttons.
- How many. Not a free number. The number of places you actually offered, with the guest confirming rather than declaring. See saying exactly who is invited.
- Everybody’s names, if the party is more than one. This is the one couples leave out and then regret, because a head count seats nobody. The place cards, the table plan and the caterer’s list are all built from names.
- Anything they cannot eat. Covered in asking guests about dietary requirements.
That is the whole form. Every extra field costs you replies, and a song request costs you a reply in exchange for something nobody uses.
What to never ask#
- A postal address. You are not posting anything.
- Which of the three main courses. Ask a fortnight out, when the menu is fixed and the numbers are real.
- Anything you will not read. If nobody is going to act on the answer, the question is costing you replies for nothing.
The two changes that do most of the work#
Put the form on the invitation. Not a separate site, not an email address, not a link inside a link. A guest who finishes reading and finds the form immediately below is a guest who replies while they are still thinking about it. Most people who leave to reply later do not come back.
Know who has opened it. This is the change that ends blind chasing. A guest who opened the invitation twice and has not replied needs a nudge. A guest who never opened it has a broken address, and no amount of nudging fixes that. Two completely different problems that look identical from the outside.
The deadline#
Set it three weeks before your caterer’s final numbers date, and put it in a sentence rather than after the letters RSVP.
Please let us know by 1 August, whichever way.
Whichever way earns its place. A meaningful share of non replies are people who cannot come and feel awkward saying so, and that clause gives them permission.
Then chase properly#
One nudge at six weeks, to the people who have not answered, individually. Not to the whole list. There is more on the wording of that in what to do about the guests who never reply.
