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Our RSVP deadline has come and gone. We’re finishing up the last phone calls and emails to finalize our guest list. It turns out that no matter how many eyes I put these darn DIY invitations in front of, no matter how many times I stared at them, no matter how many iterations they went through, there was bound to be some fails.
If you look closely to the RSVP above, you’ll notice that an invited guest who needs to “Regretfully Decline” is not required to do anything other than decline. The individual isn’t asked to indicate who the heck s/he or they are! Uber Fail. What the heck was I thinking… or not thinking. Who the heck is this person? Apparently, s/he didn’t realize that I wasn’t a mind reader. There’s a chance the name of the invited was written on the envelope. However, my lovely brother, who has been graciously collecting my RSVPs for me because I live on the other coast did not keep the cards with their respective envelopes. How could he have possibly known I would need them? I didn’t even know.
Lucky for my silly self, I numbered each RSVP as so many people have suggested in the past. This S.A.V.E.D. me! I could at least look up the number and see who the card belonged to.
Not everyone was an uber fail like me, check below.
Yup, Mrs Paisley was an invited guest to our wedding. Unfortunately, she will not be able to make it. However, she DID write in her name. Thank goodness, because you’ll notice that I forgot to number her card. Talk about a failed system. Now I can see why the professionals get paid the big bucks to do this gig for a living.
In the end, we survived. This mistake didn’t destroy us. It did cause me to yell at a couple cards like they were bad drivers cutting me off on the highway, but I got past it. I used that noggin of mine, and life will go on.
Save others in the hive from silly mistakes on their RSVPs. What advice do you have to offer?
*personal photos*
I forgot to number ours, I hope I dont run into this. I read your card though and couldnt figure out what was wrong, I wouldnt have picked up on this either.
We did the same thing! Mr. Snow remembered to number though. We received a lot of declines from well-intentioned folk who marked up the RSVP to say “NOT COMING”, etc.
I forgot to put the “RSVP by suchandsuch date” part. Ugh. I’m sure lots of pestering emails/phone calls are in my future!
Maybe your smartie pants guests (like Mrs. Paisley) will write their names anyhow?
@Miss Starfish - I didn’t number ours and we were fine, so maybe you will be too.
I wouldn’t have caught that either! If I had I would have still put my name on the card—people are strange to not put a name on it. I did number the corners of my postcards and it’s a good thing, my own FATHER didn’t put his name on the card. I shouldn’t have sent him one anyway, silly me, but I was just stuffing the envelopes and forgot to omit.
I wrote a # in the envelope respective to the RSVP…let’s hope people actually use them!!
I am so glad we numbered our cards. We got quite a few declines (and even a couple of acceptances) with no names on them and were able to look up the number. Ours said “names of guests” and not “names attending” but I don’t think it made a difference.
However, nothing would have helped us with one card that the post office delivered as a half card. I don’t know how they figured out who to deliver it to with half an address. The side of the card with the number was cut off, as was the accept checkbox. Thank goodness we had already followed up with the person when we didn’t get the RSVP on time and recognized the name of one of the children.
We actually kind of did that too - but we numbered all of ours with black light pen, so when they come in nameless we’ll just scan them and see who they belong to!
We’re going to use the black light pens so that we don’t have anything like this happen! Just the thought of it stresses me out, haha
We didn’t number and it gave me a few heart attacks. Luckily we only had 1 no-name and I was able to figure it out.
I’ll be stuffing my envelopes this weekend and I just made my numbered list yesterday. Now all I have to do is remember to put the numbers on the cards!
I totally bought a black-light pen just for the purposes of slyly numbering the RSVP cards, then sealed half the envelopes before I remembered. Oopsie! Luckily, I was just sealing them with round stickers, so I was able to gently peel them off to commence with the numbering, but I did feel like quite the fail whale. Guess I’m glad I did, seeing as how seemingly EVERY bee has RSVPs come back without names!
You just made me go double check our RSVP cards. I am pretty sure it appears that filling in a name is mandatory on ours…I hope. I had better number them just to be sure.
Whew, good thing you thought to do the numbers on most of them!
Always glad for tips since this will me doing it late next Spring & thanks for sharing!
Oh no, that is a bit of a logistic fail 
We did the classic M_________ so everyone had to write their names. And we numbered them for extra safety. Looks like you’re gonna have to do some investigating!
Thank goodness for a numbering system on rsvp cards! We left a line for guests to put their name (regardless of accept/decline), but a few times it was indeed hard to read their handwriting! Thank goodness for numbers!
By far the best advice I would give is to use weddingwire.com for your RSVP’s. It’s very easy - set up an excel spreadsheet with the headings they require, upload it and wait for the magic. It also has a seating chart that works in flash where you can drag and drop little named people into their seats and move them around. If you do the seating chart before RSVPs and someone declines that person is automatically removed from the seating chart.
Sadly, even after several reviews by differents sets of eyes, our wedding invites went out with a typo. The wedding was listed to take place at 1 O’Cclock.
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Mrs. Hot Wings, Chicago/San Diego Age and Occupation: 28, Professor Fiance's Age and Occupation: 32, Instructor Engagement Date: December 20, 2008 Wedding Date: August 2010 Venue: Ocean View Villas/Jasmine Seafood Restaurant About Me: I am a psychology grad student living in Chicago and planning my wedding to a fellow psych grad student. I am a Sunny So-Cal bred gal who trudged across the country to follow her love of psychology and ended up finding a partner in the process. I am overly passionate about anything I involve myself with. I am an activist, a foodie, a reality TV watching junkie, an over-analyzer, a photography obsesser, and am utterly cheesy to the core. This is a story of what happens when a boy and a girl meet, fall in love over academic dorkiness, and a shared love for life. We (mostly I) are planning our semi-destination wedding in my hometown of San Diego. We are excited to bring our families and friends together from across our lifespans to celebrate our future in a grand 400+ person culturally blended affair!
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