RSVP postage? *rant*

I am thinking of doing the same thing and not putting stamps on the rsvp card and just have the rsvp online on our wedding website or emailing us or calling us. its too much money to buy stamps and were on a budget =) my brothers have done it before just having the guest call and everyone did so ill follow them =)

We are putting stamps on the rsvp cards. We are doing seal n' sends so they'll just send back a postcard...not too high of postage. I respect everyones views on this but I feel if you're hosting the party then all these little extras are at your expense. I like the idea of rsvp online but so many of our guests are older and don't know how to work a computer lol.

It's funny to me that this is such a hot topic. I guess some people think RSVP cards are a necessary nicety. No offense to anyone who uses them - they look lovely - but I think they are among the dinosaurs of traditions that made sense when mail was the primary way of communicating over long distance, but not anymore. Now it's unnecessary paper in the trash, and unnecessary money spent.

If guests were as dedicated to the tradition as people throwing weddings, I might have been talked into it, but everyone I know loses those little things! As it has been, my MIL has actually enjoyed being the point of contact for DH's family. Those who had difficulty with RSVP'ing online (almost no one) or those who just didn't feel like it (a good chunk) just called and told her, and she entered the responses. Ahh, so much easier!

BTW - I am in favor of almost anything that reduces the massive amount of paperwork I have to deal with in my professional and personal lives, so perhaps I am a little biased.

I look at this way:

If I received an invite that says call/email an RSVP, I would assume a very, very casual, low-key event. On par with a birthday party. Certainly not a formal event.

If a couple can afford to send out a hundred + STD's (something I consider useless under most conditions), but suddenly get cheap on not including postage on the RSVP - it speaks volumes to me.

Technology is great - up to a point. But, really? If a couple sent out 150+ invites, who wants to juggle all those phones, look for all those emails, and keep track of all the online RSVP's? So much simpler to get the RSVP back, and place it in a file/folder to keep track of. After all, one answers the phone while in a rush - will they really remember just who they spoke to later on? It does happen. Even emails can get deleted by accident.

We sent RSVP cards with stamps to my side. I spoke with my cousin and she had a good response rate for her wedding a year ago so I figured mine will be similar.

Most of his side does not live in this country so I can't exactly put US stamps on typical RSVP. Instead we included a note providing them different ways to contact us.

Far as keeping track of online I don't really see it being an issue. I have a separate label set-up in my gmail account for all wedding related emails and I immediately update my access file that lists all my guests. In every day life at my job I have to keep track of the statuses of my projects and all this is done online so doing something simple at RSVP for a wedding will not be a huge issue. But then again I do everything online - even my calendar, notes, addresses etc.

I think we are doing the online RSVP from our website with a special e-mail account as well. Someone else said this same thing, putting hotel, direction, a registry information.

Most of our family and friends live close by, so we are thinking about hand delivering a far chunk of the invites when the time comes. We only have a few out-of-state guests coming. Everyone we know has internet, and knows how to work a computer. Even our grandparents! Thanks to us young kids for teaching them how to use it! Its amazing!

Michele S. - you don't have to do any of that. All you have to do is provide your invitees with your website address and the password, if you added one. As long as you know their names, you don't need any other contact info to set up the online RSVP.

I understand that some people feel that a formal event gets a paper RSVP, but the paper RSVP thing has never made sense to me anyway. I'll just consider myself a trailblazer.

Wow. This post really blew up since I last checked in. lol

I know we'll be putting postage on the RSVPs... I just hate thinking of the money that I waste on these things because people can't have the common courtesy to check a box and drop it in the big blue box. I did RSVPs, stamped, with my first wedding. I still have all the RSVPs saved in the same box as the left over invites somewhere in storage. I like having that physical response to have in my hand because it helps me keep track better. I guess, if we do decide to do paper RSVPs, we will Not be offering an alternative format for response because there is no excuse to not use the format given when everything but filling in their name and response has been done for them.

We are adding postage even though it will be aggravating to not get the RSVPs back from certain people. We pretty much know who will send it back and who wont. We have lovely members of our family who will tell us "you know we will be there" and the ones that lose everything! (my mom)

We did response cards with the stamps included. I have to agree, it's been getting the cards back in the mail. If you send a card, then I feel you should include the postage.

I am not huge on etiquette in any way, but I definitely think that if you're going to send out RSVP cards that you want back, you should definitely put postage on it for them.

We had RSVP postcards which requires a less expensive stamp than regular. Something to think about. Plus you can get a ton of stamps for Costco that you can use for a while. Thats what we did. =]

RSVPs are a nice keepsake.. in hind sight, they def. seem like a waste of money and I doubt it would have taken away from the feel of the wedding... if i went back and did it again, I wouldn't have done RSVP's.. but at the time, here in Canada, after I bought the stamps for the RSVP's I got my invites out a couple of weeks before the postal workers went on strike - until a week and a half before the wedding... most people didn't send them back, could be for a number of reasons, but we still had to be the ones to find people's phone numbers and call them... if you want to talk etiquette.. you were invited to a wedding, call the poor bride who is running of her feet and tell her whether or not you're coming, it really isn't that big of a deal...

I am having a wedding website that everyone is rsvp to. It prints a spreadsheet of what everyone is ordering and has a passcode that the dinner guests are given. I also then get everyones email which will send out a reminder of their meal selection, weather updates, and last minute notes.

That's what I'm having them RSVP online or by phone

Darn Pumpkin...Your experience speaks volumes in favor of using postage. I love that you posted stats.

I totally agree with Michelle S. when she wrote:

If a couple can afford to send out a hundred STD's (something I consider useless under most conditions), but suddenly get cheap on not including postage on the RSVP - it speaks volumes to me.

I just ordered my daughter's STDs. She is not having a DW, so, imho, they were unnecessary. However, she wanted them, and they were relatively inexpensive on Vistaprint. However, she is footing the bill for all postage.

I agree....I am also fail to understand what’s the need to send them...But as far as I know it’s only because , so that you can have the exact head counts for your arrangements.....But sending them through email is a good option....You Don’t need to waste your money on extra cards for them who don’t even bother to response back......I am sending mine through email....

As a bride planning my wedding, and someone who has been invited to many weddings in the past two years, postage on rsvps is a must. It is part of the invitation. I recently had to pay for a stamp for a rsvp card for a wedding that we were not even going to, annoying!

RSVP related stuff is one thing that really pisses me off.

We spent over $600 on the invitations, not including the postage of $2.50 each to send out.... I included a website and a self addressed and stamped RSVP card so people can RSVP.... But I still got a crummy response rate.

DH insisted on including the stamps for the RSVP cards... If he wasn't insistent, I would've just said screw the RSVP stamp. I may have included it for those that are technology challenged and those that I need to be super formal with, but the rest can email, text, Facebook, give me smoke signals (as someone else mentioned)!

I included a stamp with each RSVP card, but I left the "backing" on it so they can use it for something else. If they're far away, or I need to be formal, then I stuck the stamp on the car.

ugh! hate rsvp stuff!

I had our wedding wire web address printed on our invitations so people could go there and RSVP. That saved us a good bit of money. This way I only put RSVP stamps on the ones that were going to older people that probably won't go online. And left the RSVP postage off of the ones that I knew would go online and utilize the RSVP tool. And it worked out very well and everyone loved the website idea!! We also paid $11.00 at godaddy so we could personallize our web address to just our names.

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