R (e) S V and P! (you know the tune)

Cappuccino on a saucer, muffins in the oven, Riley watching one of his favourite (yet somewhat obnoxious) politics-commentating YouTuber beside me, I’m ready to write!

Wowza.

The day has finally come that EVERYONE ON OUR GUEST LIST HAS RSVP’d!

Disclaimer: Everyone except one person, my cousin, who is due to have a baby any day now!!! She’s going to make a very last minute call on whether or not she’ll be able to make it. So she gets a pass!

Let me tell you. If you want people to RSVP by a certain date, set it the week after you send out invites. Exaggerating of course, but goodness.

Our deadline was June 1st… to give you an idea.

I know in the wedding planning process, you need to make room for people who are not necessarily at your level organization-wise. *sigh* However, I didn’t think I’d only be able to finalize the seating chart and other guest-related affairs when we’re 41 days out.

FORTY-ONE DAYS PEOPLE!

To be fair, a few of our late RSVP-ing guests were added to the list later on in the game.

Riley and I were very set on keeping the number small, but as some of our guests got their RSVP surveys in and they were coming back “I can’t make it” we thought it would be nice to go outside the family and closest of close friends and include some other people who played a part in our lives.

Call it a B-list if you will, I know you already are!

I’m a firm believer that you need to be a bit ruthless in the selection process if you want to stick to your budget. As a people-pleaser, I knew I would take the bait if I started hearing about people feeling “left out” or “disappointed” that they weren’t invited.

Remember: You can’t take the bait if you don’t have the bucks!

Instead of caving for each and every one of these types (there were a few…) we kept them in the back of our minds and invited them once guests had declined the invite. We did so on the condition that they would not hold a grudge when it came to not being invited in the first place.

It also helps to send your invites out way early. This instills in people’s minds that they are either A. invited, or B. not invited. Word travels…

By the time A’s RSVPs actually come in, B’s have almost forgotten about the whole thing and if you approach them and say:

“We’d really like you to be a part of our wedding. We know it’s fast-approaching, but would you (and a “plus one”, if applicable) consider coming?”

It worked every time.

We didn’t do this too many times! Only a handful of guests were added round two. It’s about 5%. Using the 5% rule, people with a larger guest list to begin with may have a greater amount of people to approach should they want to keep numbers intact.

It’s definitely do-able, and you shouldn’t be shy and afraid of offending people. I’d suggest being open and honest about the situation and not trying to act like the B-listers were/are A-listers. We’re all geniuses here… we know what’s up.

Side note: I just looked down at my sparkly engagement ring and Barbie-pink nails for a solid 1 minute. Ha! WEDDING VIBESSS.

I can’t remember if I mentioned this in another post, but we used surveymonkey.com for our RSVP surveys. Accounts are simple to create (I already had one for work) and with the free version you can create a survey up to 10-questions deep. That even gave us some room to ask what our guests’ fave cheesy wedding song, or fave drink is.

What I loved about surveymonkey was that you can get a shareable link that can be sent to guests via Facebook messenger, text, email, you name it. So even if they weren’t in the initial e-vite batch generated by MailChimp, we could still get them the survey efficiently.

This tool also allows you to keep a log of all answers automatically, which will come in handy when relaying meal choice figures to our venue or going over the spelling to every guest’s name.

I’m a big fan of checking, double-checking, and triple-checking lists. Surveymonkey makes that a piece of (wedding) cake. (No, this post is not sponsored by surveymonkey…)

Fun fact: we aren’t having a wedding cake! We opted for different types of pie instead, which was one of the survey questions, of course.

With our RSVPs finalized. We completed the seating chart.

Tip: If you know how to, USE EXCEL.

We started way back in the day (7 months ago) on paper, and it got so messy so quickly.

Riley and I use a Google Doc with multiple tabs to track all-things-wedding. One of the tabs is our seating chart and is a bird’s eye view of our venue hall.

With Excel, you can set up your document to easily add and/or remove guests, as well as move them around, if need be. Our tables are square/rectangle so this was quite easy. I don’t know how you’d swing it if they were round tables, but I’m sure there’s a way! There’s also tons of tools online, but with a small number of guests, they were too fancy for us.

I even recently added where the dance floor, guestbook/honeyfund station, photo booth set-up, speakers, and bar would be on our layout. This plan will come in handy when setting up the hall the day before the wedding and planning out decorations.

Trick: Make a seating chart based off your initial guest list. It will help categorize your guests (unless you’re just letting people sit wherever they want). This will, in turn, help you figure out what type of B-guests to invite in the event of cancellations.

Our 6 guest tables are categorized as follows:

1-Bride’s adult family and friends/spouses of adults 2-Bride’s “kid” family and friends of kids 3-Bride’s friends & work colleagues 4-Groom’s friends 5-Groom’s adult family 6-Groom’s “kid” family and friends of kids

Then there is the Head Table which consists of the VIPs: MOH (Maid of Honour), Bride, Groom, and BM (Best Man). Lastly we have our Photo Table which includes our photographer and her assistant.

PSA: DON’T FORGET TO FEED YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER(S)! We heard some horror stories from our photographer and we feel personally responsible for passing on this public service announcement. Pay it forward.

Our tables are easy to build on since they’re composed of a series of 2-person square tables attached to one another. This means we can simply make the rectangular tables longer or shorter depending on who we have in each category of guests.

If a couple at table 1 can’t make it, we tried to look into inviting someone in the same category before looking elsewhere. Question of keeping the tables, and bride/groom sides, balanced. We know that once all is said and done we’ll all be family, but hey, it’s the principle of the matter. Riley and I are splitting costs 50/50, so it makes sense to try and split the guest list 50/50 (40/46 to be exact…).

These tips and tricks may not be applicable to all, but they sure have worked for us!

If you go the small-country-wedding route, which based off Pinterest makes up 87.67% (not an exact science) of today’s weddings, you can use our type of model.

I wish you the best of luck in your planning process.

#FORTYONEDAYS

#wedding