Monday, March 28, 2011

Wedding Etiquette- The RSVP

RSVP. répondez s'il vous plaît. Respond please or please respond.

OR

OMFG Whyyyy has only 1/4 of the people invited said they are coming! What are the other 75% dooooiiiiing?!?!!?

I never understand why people can't RSVP to things. Is it because they can't come? Don't want to come? Don't yet know if they are going to come? Forgot?

Whatever it is, it is most definitely, without a doubt RUDE to NOT  RSVP. Whether you are coming or not. Especially to weddings.

I'm not a big fan of spending a lot of money on wedding invitations... but some people do. We bought ours from Michael's and printed on them ourselves. I probably spent about $100 on invitations with Michael's coupons, and we wasted a whole bunch trying to get the printer to print properly. We also still have almost a whole box of 30 left over.

What was my point there? Oh! Some people spend a lot of money on wedding invitations, only to have about 20% of them thrown right into the trash or "lost." Think about that when you get one next time and toss it in the garbage right away! Someone spent a lot of time and potentially money on that! Maybe there's a little blood too from all the paper cuts...
Anyhoozit.

The bottom line is... If you get an invitation with an 'RSVP by' date, do it. Most people opt to send the RSVP envelopes with a stamp already on them, so all you have to do is write your name and the name of your guest(s) and put it in your mailbox!

OHH!! And that little line, the mysterious M_______________. The M is there for a reason and so is the line. The M is there for you to begin writing Mr./Mrs./Miss whatever... followed by the names of ALL of the guests attending. I know there's never enough space, but write all of the names anyway.. it's ok if they aren't all on the line.. write them underneath! Hell, use the back of the card to write the names, just put them SOMEWHERE. And PLEASE do NOT send response cards back with no name on them.. how do you expect people to know who the flying monkey butts you are?!

The 'Maybe'
The maybe is.. well. Rude AND sucky. Here's the dealio. Most wedding venues/caterers (and this is if you are NOT catering your own wedding) (why would you do that?) require that you give them a final headcount at least 2 weeks in advance. Some may be in as little as a week but it all depends on the size of the venue and the types of events they cater to. So! If you say, "I don't know if we are going to come yet. Put us down as 'maybe'" The bride has to guestimate how many people to add to her list. You probably won't be the only maybe, so let's just say that for every 100 people, there's probably 10 "maybes"  Our venue cost is inclusive of quite a few things. Venue, catering, open bar for 3.5 hours, DJ and cake for $88 per person for the meal package we chose. So $88 x 10= $880! That's a lot of money for a "maybe!"

I would say, just to be safe, if someone says they are a "maybe" tell them to let you know two and a half weeks out. If they are still a "maybe" then, count them out.

They also say that you should expect at least 20% of the people you invite to decline the invitation, and 15-20% to ignore your free stamp and very important deadline. A good estimate for out of town guests accepting is probably 55%. Of course, this depends on the relative wealth of your invited guests and age. Meaning, if they po, they prolly ain't comin! If they old and crippled, they prolly ain't comin! If they old AND po, they definitely ain't comin!

Sorry....

We invited about 130 people to our wedding with a goal of no more than 100 actually showing up. Our RSVP by date was March 25th and since then, we have received about 76 yes's, 15ish No's and 10ish "maybe's."  Most of our guests are out of towners (not in the Tri-State area of Virginia, DC or Maryland).

So...(and I didn't do these calculations until AFTER writing all of the other stuff!! Creeeepyyyy)
 58% of our invited guests said YES.
 8% said MAYBE
 11% said NO
 23% have not responded <--------FAAAAAAILLLLLLLLL

Pretty close to the guestimations "they" set out.

Who are "they" anyway? I dunno.

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