Hidden Messages

Hidden Messages

January 6th, 2010 @ 5:44 pm by Mrs. Spaniel
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Sometimes I get surprised by how little people know about weddings who aren’t actually planning one. I was shocked to learn that some people don’t realize that you should generally avoid wearing a long white gown to a wedding if you’re not the bride, that not everyone understands that you probably shouldn’t bring an uninvited date without permission, or that some people don’t know how to fill out a response card that comes with a wedding invitation!

I suppose some response cards are less than 100% self-explanatory, and our RSVP postcards are not really any exception: they are laid out like this.

We hope that by asking people to initial their entrée selections, we’ll know how many in a family are attending, but in hindsight we probably should have replaced the “__ ACCEPTS” with “__ of __ ACCEPTS” so that they’d know to indicate a number (and also what the maximum number ought to be!). But we just couldn’t figure out a way to make it painfully clear that the “M_________” line needs to be filled in with a name! I thought everyone knew this, but as we’ve shown some of our friends the invitation suites, they had no idea… so I’m glad I checked!

To combat the possibility of having to sort through 115 sets of names to determine by process of elimination who a particular RSVP card may have come from, I did what many brides wisely do: I put numbers on each of them, corresponding to their position on a spreadsheet I’ve been managing since we started making our guest list. There are lots of ways to hide these numbers—one of the coolest I’ve seen was Mrs. Green Tea’s MOH’s black light pen method—but I already knew I wanted to add more visual interest to the back of the postcards so I decided to design a monogram where I could tuck the number into in a non-obtrusive kind of way. Here is the monogram I came up with…

And here’s what it looks like “in action”!

It was a simple little add (even though I had to actually manually change the number 115 times and hand-feed each postcard through the photo printer!) but I am super glad I did this: unlike the envelope liners, I have no post-DIY regrets and I really love the way they came out.

How did you track your RSVPs?

Tags: diy, rsvp, stationery |

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37 Responses to “Hidden Messages”

1 2 Last

Bee

Mrs. Espresso (message) 1,310 posts, Bumble bee

You’re so stealth Miss Spaniel

1/6/10 @ 5:55 pm (reply)

Bee

Mrs. Penguin (message) 3,526 posts, Sugar bee

Ooo fancy! I’ve never seen this done before! I wonder if any guests will notice!

1/6/10 @ 5:59 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Hamster (message) 4,047 posts, Honey bee

Whoa!! That’s dedication! I’m impressed!

1/6/10 @ 6:09 pm (reply)

Member

KMSull (message) 6,442 posts, Bee Keeper

Ooooooh that’s tricky! I love the blacklight pens, we’ll probably go that route cause it’s the easiest.

1/6/10 @ 6:23 pm (reply)

Member

lemondrop (message) 1,198 posts, Bumble bee

Pretty much the same, I have a pretty stamp on the front and have hidden the numbers inside of it- by hand though.

I gave up on the M_________ part and just went with Names__________. People just weren’t getting it when I showed them. I definitely went with ____ number attending, just to make my life easier!

1/6/10 @ 6:23 pm (reply)

Member

apaisley (message) 28 posts, Newbee

Great idea, Miss Spaniel!!! You may have talked about it in a past post, but where did you find the design for the rsvp cards! It is too cute!!

1/6/10 @ 6:28 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Spaniel (message) 6,809 posts, Busy Beekeeper

@Mrs. Penguin: Me too! I’m trying not to point it out to everyone.

@lemondrop: That was smart. I did one by hand, but it looked weird to me (my handwriting is too big!). It took awhile, but it was fun because I felt like a secret agent. Haha!

@apaisley: I got the invitations/RSVP cards from Invitations by Ajalon–it was their “Baroque” design. The back I designed myself in Illustrator.

1/6/10 @ 6:34 pm (reply)

Member

Heavnzbrat (message) 115 posts, Blushing bee

seriously, there are a lot of ppl who don’t know wedding etiquette.

1/6/10 @ 6:40 pm (reply)

Guest

Anon

Maybe I’m in the minority here but if I don’t understand something, I ask someone else their opinion… or I Google it! My husband and I went the route of not having RSVP cards at all and went the traditional route of having our guests reply on their own stationary.

I had a couple of people “not get” our method but they are of the age where they can Google it. At least ask someone else or the couple!

I just think people are lazy. Thus, we didn’t track RSVPs. If people didn’t RSVP, we made a best guess as to who was coming. Surprisingly, we were close but about 10 people RSVPed to us and didn’t show on the day.

1/6/10 @ 6:42 pm (reply)

10.

Bee

Miss Spaniel (message) 6,809 posts, Busy Beekeeper

@Anon: Me too!!! But a lot of people don’t. Our guestlist is large enough that I would seriously rather track numbers than call anyone who forgot to write their name or didn’t RSVP at all to figure out who is responding. It’s just too pricey to guess, though… I don’t want to reserve meals for people who actually have no plans to go, or to pay premiums if I guess too low to make sure they are still fed.

1/6/10 @ 6:46 pm (reply)

11.

Hostess

Jessie516 (message) 5,480 posts, Bee Keeper

Wow, how stealthy and cool!

1/6/10 @ 6:47 pm (reply)

12.

Member

soonerpsych (message) 1,898 posts, Buzzing bee

Mrs. Green Tea’s post about this changed my whole RSVP perspective. I am definitely doing the __ of __ attending with that second number filled in. And hiding the number in a monogram like you is brilliant! I’ll definitely be thinking of this!

1/6/10 @ 6:49 pm (reply)

13.

Guest

Anon

Miss Spaniel, I completely understand. My mother is extremely old-fashioned and doesn’t think it’s “proper” to call so we just had to guess. This upset me greatly at first that we were going to waste money and when it got closer to our date, she realized how umm… improper people were. We had six people cancel after we had already given our headcount, five days before the wedding!

I guess my best advice to keep you (and the other Bees) sane: you can’t control your guests’ actions, some people are just flaky and rude, and in the end, you will be married and that’s all there is to it!

1/6/10 @ 6:54 pm (reply)

14.

Member

Cole B (message) 1,368 posts, Bumble bee

Sneaky Sneaky!

1/6/10 @ 6:58 pm (reply)

15.

Guest

Danielle

Cool idea! Others wanting to do this could use a mail merge file with one field to create a file with 115 pages, each with a unique number.

1/6/10 @ 7:02 pm (reply)

16.

Bee

Miss Scissors (message) 7,343 posts, Busy Beekeeper

You are so sneaky! I think i might do the blacklight pen route. :p

I also get really surprised about things that people don’t know regarding weddings. RSVP stuff and dresscode stuff tend to be the worst, imho.

1/6/10 @ 7:09 pm (reply)

17.

Member

mimi06d (message) 646 posts, Busy bee

I can’t seem to figure out a way to make the rsvp clear enough to know who is coming and what they’d like to eat. And I’m worried about getting blank ones back as well so I got some black light pens (for free!!). Yours is super sneaky though — love it!

1/6/10 @ 7:09 pm (reply)

18.