Weddingbee Blog

My feeling is that even if you give people the number they’re supposed to bring - those who were inclined to bring more people before these types of wordings came into vogue will still bring more people who are not invited.

I’m hoping that the majority of people will respect what is on the invitation and that alone. That being said, I’ve actually gone totally off base with the RSVP cards. They are a flip open car that says “The favor of a reply is requested by XXX date” and it comes with the envelope addressed and stamped. This does two things (hopefully) - most people who write a note will sign it “Mary and I will be thrilled to be there, Love, Bob” and it gives guests a chance to write lovely notes if they so wish.

My sister did this and got really thoughtful and nice notes from people who wanted to send them well wishes, as well as tell them if they could come or not.

I am so not knowing what to do with our RSVP cards… I know that this is where we are supposed to help you for posting Miss Kiwi, but I have a simillar dilemna - -

My FMIL has decided to maximize her invite list, by ‘deciding’ that her guests aren’t allowed to bring dates (TACKY), and to further complicate things I am having a sit down dinner with arranged seating… I was already trying to come up with a subtle way to ask my guests to write the name of their date on their reply card. Now what should I write “Please include the name of your date, unless of course you are a guest of grooms family in that case no dates allowed” - seriously WHAT is a girl to do???

Okay, I’m done venting - I like your RSVP card, it is simple, to the point, and you managed to squeeze in the oh so formal ‘favour’ into the mix… I love the ‘our’ on everything.

We’re living on the edge–we really did say “number attending,” with a space for each day of events (a friend calls it the wedstravaganza weekend). I’ve had a bridesmaid ask if her boyfriend is invited [okay], and a cousin ask if she can bring her two adult daughters [no, because it's not fair to the other 28 people in the same situation who weren't invited]. But most notably, the one person we all assumed would write in extra guests responded with a one in each box.

The more wedding websites I read, the more lucky I feel that no one’s responded with extra guests. I can see where my cousin was coming from, particularly because we did invite her brother’s young children, but his kids are in elementary school, and hers are in their 20s and married. Big difference.

I too am doing the ___ of ____ . I did make sure I had a majority of the dates names so it would seem a little more personal.

oh gosh. we did __ of __ guests, and now I’m in shock that it is generally considered bad manners. oh well. our guests hopefully understand that we’re both students.

I’m doing:

name(s): ___________________________

# attending: ___ unable to attend: ___

I read somewhere that if you do the “_ of _ seats have been reserved for you” and for example one of the 2 people invited can’t attend… then they’ll feel free to bring whoever they want with them. We have a growing “B” list that we want to be able to invite from if we get any regrets so by doing # attending… if someone rsvp’s for a number larger then we intended then whoever’s list they were on will just make a polite phone call explaining that they were not invited with a guest in the first place.

It works best for us this way. But do whatever works best for you! Good luck.

I worded mine just as you suggested, but left off the __ seats reserved line. I’m in the minority, but I don’t mind if an invited guest replaces her husbands with a friend or if someone asks me if she can bring a guest. We aren’t too tight on space and we’re already spending out the whazoo, so what’s a few dollars more to make our best friends happy. (Granted, we know every person on our guest lists. They are our guests, not our parents).

I am writing in the names of the invited guests on the RSVP with a will/will not attend option, i.e. _Susan and Bob_
_ will attend
_ will not attend

I just could not figure out how to deal with the uninvited guest issue without doing it this way. However, I have a small guest list… not sure I’d want to do 200 of these!

Writing in people’s names for them wouldn’t have worked for us, because already we have two couples where only one is coming; given the choice of “John and Mary will attend” and “John and Mary will not attend,” there’s no right answer.

Petra–thumbs up. We were lucky in that we only guessed wrong on one person’s dating status–for most of the single people, we either knew their date’s name long in advance, or correctly figured they wouldn’t have a date–but if you’re in a situation where you’ve stopped keeping constant track of who your college friends or cousins are dating, your solution seems very reasonable.

We sent out RSVP’s similar to what you’re trying to do, because the chapel we’re getting married in is pretty small, so we’re limiting number of invites and not inviting children. Be warned however, because people are writing their children in on the invitations. And then getting really upset when we’re politely calling and explaining the situation. And upset that we “forgot” to invite their children in the first place.