Miss Hydrangea, Dallas
Age and Occupation: 26, Administrative Assistant
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Network Analyst
Engagement Date: June 2007
Wedding Date: September 2008
Blogging Since: January 14, 2008
Venue: Catholic Church and Reception at The W Hotel
About Me: Mr. H and I come from very different cultures and backgrounds so I'm excited to plan our wedding with a balance of both traditions. My mom has always been a DIY queen, and I'm just now starting to get into it with a new house and a wedding to plan!
Drumroll Please…
July 18th, 2008 @ 11:30 am by Miss Hydrangea
Our invitations are in! Actually, they came in several weeks ago, but we had to redesign the RSVP card and reprint their envelopes with a different address (more details on that later). Before I share with you the whole invitation suite, I wanted to talk a little more about the RSVPs.
I don’t know of any wedding that hasn’t had some sort of an issue with people returning their RSVP cards, but Mr. H and I had several obstacles to overcome when it came to this portion of our invitations. Because Mr. H is the first generation born here in the States, a lot of his family is not used to RSVPs. Also, in his family, although they send out invites, it is normal for people to bring along other family members, friends, etc. that weren’t given an invitation. Finally, while most are fluent in English, there are still quite a few members who are more comfortable with Spanish.
Because we don’t want 500 people at our wedding, and because we want to try to get the maximum amount of returned RSVPs, we chose to try and curb some of this by writing a very detailed RSVP card.
We wrote everything in Spanish and English, to avoid any language barrier situations. Also, we chose to put a line saying “We have reserved ___ seats in your honor.” As we put the invites into their envelopes, we will hand write in the number of seats that each party has. Finally, we opted to send out our invitations a little early so that the RSVP date is three weeks from the wedding. We figure this would give us ample time to make any calls to people who haven’t RSVP’d.
How did you all handle the wording on your RSVPs? Did anyone else have language/culture barriers to work with?
11 Responses to “Drumroll Please…”
I love the “We have reserved __ seats in your honor.” line. We are doing something very similar on our RSVPs, and I think it is brilliant. No mistake as to who is (or isn’t) invited.
i think detailed RSVPs are a great idea. We did something similar by creating two versions of the RSVP, on for singles and one for couples and I wrote in the names myself ahead of time. I bet people will still have “write-ins” but what can you do.
Now i want to see more! 
We wrote ours the exact same way and we still had 6 univited children come to the wedding.
I tjhink they send it back and “forget” that only 2 were invited.
Are maybe children aren’t counted as people?
Our RSVP card read:
The favor of a reply is requested by August 9, 2008.
Name ___________________________
_____ Number Attending
_____ Not Attending
I completely forgot to number the RSVPs but so far replacing the M___________ with “Name” has really seemed to simplify what is required on the card. Also, the “number attending” wording was recommened by our invitation person in place of the standard “will attend”. Granted I only have ~30% back so far (3 weeks until the due date) but all have been filled out appropriately thus far so I am encouraged.
My dad’s side is the same (but middle eastern)… and at my brother’s wedding we needed to have a few extra tables just in case some people showed up that weren’t invited or rsvped no but were able to come at the last minute.
almost every one of those seats were filled.
We did the “we have reserved ___ seats in your honor…” on our RSVP cards as well. Coming from a culture where it’s not uncommon to invite people to attend celebrations along with you at the last minute, we wanted to curb as much of that as possible. It worked for the most part. We has about 6 “tag-alongs”, but I was ready for them. The main culprits were my aunts. I can’t imagine what our numbers would’ve been like had we not been so specific on our response cards.
what do you ladies think about writing out everyone’s name and having 2 boxes next to them to select from, (will attend or will not attend)?
For example:
Mr. John Smith: __ Will Attend __Will Not Attend (but all on one line)
Mrs. Jane Smith: __ Will Attend __Will Not Attend (but all on one line)
is that too confussing? I was thinking this way people don’t “give out” their invitation, (as I’ve seen some people complain about on other posts) and people understand that they are being invited with their significant other not their child or flavor of the month or random friend they found to play as their date for the evening.
does this seem to controlling?
we’ve got a little more flexibility because we’re doing ours online. my code monkey FI is going to build a feature where guests enter their name and it pulls up a custom page with a drop down so they can only add as many people as are allowed on the invite (so a couple could chose 0, 1, or 2 for # attending). we may also just list all the names and have a check box for attending/unable to attend after each to make it crystal clear who is included in the invite. we’ve got a small wedding, so every extra seat counts.
great cards!
i have a lot of spanish speaking guests coming too, but i didn’t want to have to translate! lazy, i know.
i figured their children could translate and the rest know enough English to understand the invites and response cards.
i’ll see what happens in a few weeks.
lol this is a great idea! I told my boyfriend that I don’t wanna have my big fat mexican wedding…. thanks for the tip!!
Loved the idea, thought it was foolproof…. but have had several people simply cross out the number of “seats reserved” and write in larger numbers. Yep.
