I spent the greater part of my lunch break yesterday talking with my mom about the response cards that are included in wedding invitations. I was wondering how necessary they were.
My mom said that she wasn’t sure if we needed them if we weren’t going to serve a meal, but I said that I had received them in cards for the last two weddings I went to, neither of which had a meal. We reached a consensus that we wanted the guests to RSVP.
I spent some time looking at inexpensive envelopes online and considered printing up my own response cards, but then I spoke with a friend who got married last summer. She said that people really don’t send back response cards with any kind of consistency, so it might be easier and more efficient to just set up an e-mail address.
I spoke to my mom today and we decided we’re going to just put the e-mail either on the invitation or on a little piece of paper in with the invitation, and it will include the e-mail address I set up as well as my parents’ home phone number.
I’m so happy about this, because it will not only save money on the printing of the response cards and the envelopes, but it will save time and money on the postage for the invitations. It does’t get much more simple than that.
Did you require or are you requiring guests to RSVP? If so, will you use response cards, e-mail or some other kind of method?
Update: Another thing I forgot to mention/ask was that for about 20-30 of the people we want to invite, we were just going to make a Facebook event. This would include many of Fiance’s friends from school as well as some of the students he works with in a campus ministry right now. Not only would they be more likely to RSVP on Facebook, but they would probably immediately throw away an invitation if we sent them one. Thoughts on this?
December 5, 2008 at 2:58 pm
We asked guests to RSVP, but we just gave them an email address and a phone number. I think putting it on a separate little piece of paper, inside the invitation, seems nice.
December 5, 2008 at 3:00 pm
That’s definitely what I’m leaning toward. Did you find that a lot of people responded by e-mail/phone?
December 5, 2008 at 3:13 pm
We did the e-mail / phone thing (no return cards), and that was 7 years ago. People were a little funny about it, but more in a “Well, look at that! Isn’t technology something!” way than in an offended way.
I think most people understand, and it’s actually easier for a lot of people (me) to just shoot off an e-mail, rather than mailing an envelope (even if it’s pre-addressed and stamped).
I say: good for you for going simple and using the e-mail approach.
December 5, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I’m feeling better and better about this. Thanks, Charlie, for the feedback! (And also, I love pearbudget!)
December 5, 2008 at 4:26 pm
we included response cards.
we got business cards that coordinated with our invitations. we asked for telephone or e-mail response and made some with corey’s phone number and some with my number for our respective families. it made stuffing the envelopes a little bit more confusing but it worked out.
we had a website at the time (don’t know if it’s still up or not) that was coreyandsarah.us that came with several e-mail addresses so we set one up as “rsvp@coreyandsarah.us”.
that being said, we should have saved what little money we spent because we probably got no more than 20 responses.
but it did give me peace of mind.
December 7, 2008 at 5:30 pm
We did very simply invites/RSVPs. No second envelope stuff. Our invite was on a single 9×6 piece of card stock and our RSVP was a regular post card with my name/address printed on the return side and on the back a place for them to just mark no or yes and how many would be attending. That way, we only had to pay for postcard postage. Our RSVPs were fairly reliable; of course people will always RSVP yes and then not show. One thing I forgot to do was to print a place for them to put their name, but most people signed it themselves. I did get a few random yes/no and I had no idea who they were from.
If the majority of the people on your invite list are comfortable with email, then by all means go for it. We chose not to because we weren’t sure how networked some of our older family members were.