My daughter wants STRICT RSVP by (date) on the wedding invitation

Is this acceptable?

Donna, Wedding Queen, President; Top Wedding Sites, Inc

Nila -Can you give me a little more information about what you’re trying to accomplish? Do I understand correctly that you want to try to enforce some sort of date?

Thanks for offering us some clarification so we can offer the best wedding advice.

nila

She wants to ensure that people reply by the stated date.

Donna, Wedding Queen, President; Top Wedding Sites, Inc

I see.

There really is no way to ensure that people do what you want. That’s pretty true of most thing, but especially tru with regard to replying to invitations, or so history seems to indicate. All you can do is put your RSVP date on your invitation and hope every guest respects it. But, you know, people are human beings and things happen, including, but not limited to loss of invitation, forgetfulness, mail delivery unsuccessful.

my recommendation is to call anyone who has not replied by the RSVP date given. it’s really all you can do.

Jodi R R Smith, The Mannersmith Etiquette Consulting

Ah, if only we lived in a world where we could strictly enforce an rsvp date… I can dare to dream. But as Donna has pointed out, we live in a world of humans, with faults and foibles. If your daughter is concerned, she should add a bit of a buffer into her rsvp date. So, if she wants to know by June 30th, she should state her rsvp date as June 25th so that she has a few dates to chase down those wayward rsvps.

As a side note, no system is perfect. There will be those guests who reply that they will be attending and then fail to show. (The industry expectation is 10% less than the rsvp number.) Please prepare your daughter so that if and when this does happen, she is not thrown for a loop.

Good luck with the wedding.