rsvp

We just sent out our invites, 8.5 months prior to our wedding, as most of our guest will have to travel and book rooms. Our RSVP date is 3 months before the wedding as the booking slot at our venue hotel closes 1 month before the wedding for our guest and our venue is only a 90 person venue. The 3 months gives us time to be able to invite that we really wanted to invite but couldn't as our "obligatory" invites went first. We are expecting a lot to say no however we couldn't bet on it and invite EVERYONE, just in case. This also gives them a little time to book the room under our booking number.

My RSVP due date will be 6 weeks before my wedding which is enough time to count everyone send confirmation to vendors and call everyone who didnt send theirs back! im ordering mine at christmas when there are some sales and throughout next year hand them out to people as i see them so im not crunched for time!

Thank all of you for your comments! Super helpful. My only concern is that were getting married on labour day long weekend, so I was worried that some people usually make separate plans for that weekend, but alas, if they can't make it then they can't make it!

I have a large amount of people invited, (split families and such) so wanted to make sure everyone knows well enough in advance.

As for favours I have a plan to order things off amazon, I seem to have everything laid out very well, just the planning as to when I need together everything done by,

I'll Definitely be asking the vendors when their deadline is for people coming !

We sent our invitations about 4 months before the wedding and had a deadline about a month before the wedding. I thought the longer the time I give them then more chance of everyone replying but that is not true. Be prepared to be a bit disappointed in your guests for being late or not even replying..not all guest do this but a select few will unfortunately. I'd say no later than a month before your wedding for the deadline, this way you can catch anyone who hasn't replied and get your numbers to your vendors.

We decided to send our invitations out one month prior to the deadline for booking our blocked hotels which is about one month before our numbers for catering are due, which is one month prior to wedding day. So all in all that comes out to 3 months before our wedding day.

Our wedding is May 2019, we sent our invites November 2018 (a little early because of all the holidays and everything in between) and our RSVP deadline was March 2019. Hope that helps!

I would have RSVP's due no more than a month before the wedding,but I would go for 6 weeks until the wedding. Check with your venue/caterer to see when you need final numbers in.

My wedding is October 19, 2019 and I'm having my RSVPs due September 1 so I can hunt down stragglers and start working on the seating chart/have final numbers for my venue by the 1 month mark.

Our invitations were sent out January 2017 (way too early for time) to the family, friends and co workers. The actual wedding was August 25, 2017. The RSVP date was set for end of March (6 months) prior to the date.

My cousin who is getting married this year in September, her Save the Date was sent out in February and the invite was sent out in April (just few weeks ago) with the details and maps to the venues. Their RSVP date was set for July 1st. 2 1/4 months prior to the wedding date.

Send out the invites 3 months prior with 1 1/2 months to RSVP to keep your numbers finalized for vendors.

If you've sent out save the dates, then you can have your RSVP date closer to your wedding date (2 months). We have ours around that (7 weeks) since we want to have our numbers in with enough time to plan out seating chart and whatnot.

I sent out save the dates 9 months before ( would’ve liked to do them a year before but our engagement was only 10 months) and I sent the invitations 4 months before. I had the rsvp 2 months before. The venue needed the final number one month before so that gave me a month to chase down any late responses and plan the seating chart.

If your doing destination wedding I would say a year in advance and if out of province 6, if just people local or within few hours 4 months. Example my wedding is Sept 14th, 2019. I am mailing out in May and rsvp by Aug 10th.

Hey! I had sent out our invitations about four months in advance, and if anything, I sent them out too early. I think I gave too much for RVSPs... I'm sure the guests received their invitations at Christmas, and didn't need to respond until mid-March, so threw it on "deal with later" pile, and never thought of it again... Our RSVP voluntary responses were quite literally 1/6. The rest needed to be contacted. So, if anything, I would phone your important out of towners well in advance to give them an informal heads up, and then don't worry about sending invites until 2-3 months before the date, with a very quick RSVP response date! Good luck!

I would clarify with your venue first when they need to know final numbers by. Mine doesn't need too much notice, maybe a week or so but I still put a month. You will need to map out what you need to do as well not just the venue. For example favours. If you invited 100 people you don't want to go ahead and spend money on 100 favours if maybe only 50 people come, so how long do you need to prepare favours?.. you should need to think of things like that and make sure to give yourself enough time as well. My wedding is June 8 and I put the rsvp date as April 30th. That gives me a little over a month to know what I'm working with, do a seating plan, provide the venue with the final number before their deadline, etc..

As DrB said you want to work backwards basically. Start with the date your venue needs numbers and add enough time before that to contact people who don’t respond right away.
I am giving myself a full month before I need numbers just so I have time to create a seating plan, and contact people without feeling super stressed.
When it comes to sending our your invites most people say about 2-3 months before your wedding day. If you have a lot of out of town guests you might want to send them a bit earlier to give them enough time to plan.
We are sending ours out by the middle of July and our RSVP date is September 1st for our Oct 4 wedding.

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Thank you so much! That helps me with my list of questions to ask the venues when we visit them as well ! Super helpful!

You need to know the deadline for final head count for your venue, then add time ahead of that to collect the stragglers. Our final head count was due 2 weeks before the wedding, we added another two weeks on top of that.

If you are planning on having a second round of invites (B list), add on enough time on top of the original calculation to account for getting the second round of invites back and the rsvps from them as well. Don’t count on people being prompt with returning them to you.