How To Handle Wedding RSVPs Like a BOSS | Wedding Q&A

Well, hello lovely humans and welcome to Engage, a wedding planning podcast for the modern day couple. I'm your host, Jamie Wolfer and I truly believe that wedding planning does not need to be complicated or time consuming. I kind of picture these episodes like jumping on a quick phone call with your wedding planner. You get your answers and you go on your merry way. Because sometimes not all of us have an hour to dedicate to listening to super long podcasts or super long intros. So without further ado, let's just jump right on into it. Today's episode is going to admittedly be a little bit all over the place. You see, every single month I sit down with the people over in the Master Plan course and answer your questions in Lifetime. So if you find yourself struggling and really need to sit down and speak with a real life wedding planner, I would love to be a part of your wedding planning journey. Join us over in the Master plan today to get your questions answered. Until then, take a listen. What is the best way to handle RSVPs? I want to party. 5 exclamation points. If someone can't show and they've RSVP'd early, can I fill those seats by inviting others when it's too late to invite someone? Okay, how many people know my feelings about an A list and a B list because I have feelings on them? If you don't, that's okay. I'm going to share them anyways. I find an A list versus a B list to be an administrative nightmare. Personally, obviously I've done this a lot. I don't manage RSVP lists for people. That's not something that I do. Why? Because I tried it once and I didn't like it. So I don't typically, as a wedding planner, handle it for someone, but I have had people do A list and B lists on multiple occasions and received a lot of feedback. Feedback from clients like you guys in the online course and in viewers over on YouTube that managing the two lists can be really difficult. So here's how that works. You usually send out invitations anywhere from six to 12 weeks in advance. A lot of people will go, wait, I thought we were supposed to send it even earlier. Only if you have a ton of people from out of state or from out of the country do you need to send it earlier. And even then if you send out a save the date, it buys you more time until you have to send out your official email invitation. So usually we don't see people sending your official invitation further in advance than about 12 weeks out. All right, so what happens then is you usually give them about at least a month to turn around to give you the information on whether or not they can attend your event so they can get time off of work, they can arrange childcare, figure out their plans, et cetera, et cetera. So let's say you send it out at 12 weeks, which again is pretty early. That means you're expecting RSVPs at the eight week mark. Do you know the amount of people that will look at your RSVP date and go, no, I'm not RSVPing yet? One, that's ridiculous. Most RSVPs are requested a month in advance, right? And two, I don't know my work schedule yet or I don't know what life is going to look like two months out. I can't quite predict that yet. And three, even if you had your RSVP date a month before your actual wedding, you're still going to be chasing down 50%. 5, 0, 50% of your RSVPs. There's a likelihood that you could. So when you try to have people RSVP early, they won't. When you try to have people RSVP on time, a lot won't. Now, I'm not saying the 50% rule or number applies to all of you, but I am saying it's something to keep in mind. So if you really want to do a B list and fill in those seats, that means that you're hoping to get enough no's by like the six week mark to send out an invitation and you give them two weeks to respond. Because you typically need your numbers for catering about a month in advance, maybe three weeks. Your caterer might, might change things around a little bit, but you need a solid enough number to talk to your florist, to talk to your rental company, to talk to your catering, your dessert, your drinks. A lot depends on getting this number figured out as quickly as possible, or at least, you know, within a reasonable amount of time before your event. So if you want to invite people at the last minute, might I suggest making sure it's easily unoffendable? Friends. The kind of friends where you're like, hey, I didn't think I have room and I didn't think I have money, but I do and I do and I want you to come. Can you come? You know what I mean? Like that group of people, those humans that you're just like, who? I didn't think I was going to make it, but I did. And now I have room for you to come to My wedding. Will you come to my wedding? But as far as formal invitations are concerned, we really don't have a lot of wiggle room here. As you saw me kind of plan out that timeline. It puts you in a little bit of a pickle where you're like, oh, shoot, I don't know when I'm supposed to send out the second round. So if you have a group of friends that you can easily talk to about this, sure, you can still do the A list, B list when it comes to your invitations. And you just, like, hope to get enough responses. And you'll have to be chasing down people and figuring out their RSVPs, maybe even by calling them on the phone or texting them or emailing them or whatnot to get it in time to figure out what your B list would be. Sitting here listening to a podcast is all fine and dandy, right? But sometimes you need an actual person to be asking some of these questions to, and you may be sitting there going, you know what, Jimmy? Actually, yeah, that. That makes a lot of sense. I would love to be able to ask you these questions. Guess what? You need to join the master plan. You've heard me talk about it, but do you know why I love it so much? You get over 10 lessons that walk you through planning your wedding with videos and spreadsheets and other detailed resources along the way. Join me and my virtual clients over in the master plan and get all your wedding planning questions answered. Literally thousands of couples have gone on this journey with me, and I'd love for you to be next. Check it out@wolferandco.com tmp that's wolferandco.com tmp Listen, wedding budgets suck. They're just like the actual worst. And the hardest part for me is that weddings are not cookie cutter. They're not one size fits all. And I think it's important to make sure that you're budgeting according to your priorities. Build a budget that works with your vision and you'll be on the path to planning a wedding that you really want. So if you want my recommendations for making your perfect budget for you and your partner, head on over to wedding priorities.com Is there a tactful way to get guests to RSVP after the date requested for a for a response has passed? Oh, okay. Or is it fair to fair slash wise to assume a non response is not attending? So column up. If they haven't responded by the time your RSVP date has passed, you have every right to come up and be like, hi, Are you coming? Are you not coming? Or enact the phone tree? I don't know. It is with moms or aunties or grandmothers. They have everyone's phone number and usually it's like written down on a piece of paper. Like, you remember those books, am I dating myself? My mom had an address book and she'd have to like, update people's addresses and phone numbers. Like, you want things to get done, you call the maternal figures in your family and you're like, hit the phone tree, Mom. Go. Like, just figure it. Help me figure out who's coming and who isn't. So as far as a tactical way, you just call them up and ask. That is totally well within your right to call them and be like, hey, I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to give you a bougie meal and watch me get married. Can you just like, say yes or no? Okay, now, I'm sure you could choose different phrasing. I'm saying that obviously to be facetious, but yes, you have every right to do that. Now. However, some people do assume if you miss the RSVP date that it's just an automatic no, because really and truly, they probably should have RSVP'd on time. But honestly, with how people operate in different cultures, sometimes they just don't. So it's up to you if you'd like to call everybody or enact the phone tree and the mom with the paper phone book. You totally can. Who? Or you can just say, hey, I assumed it was a no. Or you could be like those brides who say, if you don't RSVP by our deadline, you can bring a chair and a sandwich because that's your meal and that's your seat. I don't know if anyone's actually ever followed through on that, though. That'd be interesting. My fiance and I would love to have music and dancing at our wedding, but we feel that because the majority of our guests are going to be older, no one will join in. How do we get them to join in? Or are there any ways to help us re relieve our anxiety enough about it so that we can at least enjoy our first dance? If no one else joins in, I would listen. The amount of middle aged to senior aged persons I have seen come very close to breaking a hip on the dance floor is unconscionable. I would not write them off just because of their age, especially if you play some of their jams. I'm not. My mom has worked with me on Weddings since the very beginning. To this day, if Uptown Funk comes on, she's 67. You cannot hold that woman back. You can't. She just like clapping and she stomps at the same time. We are. We are so white. Okay? We are so. You can't hold her back. So I wouldn't necessarily just assume because of age that they're not going to join the advanced floor. If you want to really sweeten the deal to make sure that they do, try playing something. Things from different generations that are total bops. Journey will get everybody on the dance floor. Okay? If you come from a family of Hispanic descent and you don't play Suavente, they might kick you out. Okay? They might be like, it's our wedding now, you need to leave. So if you're concerned about that, I would make sure that you're just kind of touching on things from different genres and then spend a lot of time and careful attention picking out the right dj. The right DJ for you guys. Someone who understands, hey, we really want the dance floor to be packed. We want people out there enjoying it. And we're aware that, you know, that we've got different generations going on. So if we, you know, start playing some really intense, heavy swearing music at the beginning of the evening, we might lose a lot of people. So if you could kind of keep it varied and kid and, you know, grandparent friendly until 9:30pm that'd be. That'd be great. If you are struggling with wedding planning and you have questions and you just need someone to listen and to chat with, come join us in the master plan community community over at themasterplanwed. Com. I would love to have you in there. Thanks so much for listening. If you haven't done so already, subscribe, jump on over to wherever you're listening to this podcast and leave a five star review so we can let the podcast people know that Jamie knows what she's talking about sometimes. And until next time, bye, guys.