Invitation help

I had a line for arrival time and a separate line for ceremony time, arrival time was half an hour before the ceremony. I thought 30 mins would be enough time for everyone to get seated without there being a bottleneck.

If you put the arrival time only, some people will think it's the ceremony time and arrive even earlier. With the best will in the world, some people will be late.

I've just put ceremony starts at on ours, hopefully people understand this is the time to be there & ready for my arrival but who knows!! And then arrival from 7:30pm for evenings guests! RSVP yep 2 months or so is about right, we've put about 12 weeks before so it gives us time to chase xxx

I'd definitely recommend putting an RSVP date of two months before. We stupidly put one month before and then had loads of people to chase up. For some reason a lot of people thought it was ok to tell us in passing 6 months before that they were coming and then not bother to fill in the RSVP card which was in their invitation!!

We sent out day guest invitations out at the beginning of December (we get married in May), because all of our guests will have to travel 70 miles plus so need to think about hotels etc. So far we've only had about 6 RSVP's back, which is soooooo frustrating, especially when we're getting Christmas cards from guests but they haven't sent the RSVP along with it!!!

Once we've had the day RSVP's back, we'll "bump up" some evening guests to the day if there's space and send out evening invites (probably at the beginning of February).

We've put the ceremony start time on the invitation and hopefully common sense will encourage guests to arrive before I do! If they don't arrive on time, I hope it's not raining as they'll be waiting outside!

We sent out day guest invitations out at the beginning of December (we get married in May), because all of our guests will have to travel 70 miles plus so need to think about hotels etc. So far we've only had about 6 RSVP's back, which is soooooo frustrating, especially when we're getting Christmas cards from guests but they haven't sent the RSVP along with it!!!

Once we've had the day RSVP's back, we'll "bump up" some evening guests to the day if there's space and send out evening invites (probably at the beginning of February).

We've put the ceremony start time on the invitation and hopefully common sense will encourage guests to arrive before I do! If they don't arrive on time, I hope it's not raining as they'll be waiting outside!

We sent our invites out in November for our March wedding with the rsvp date 12 weeks before so we can chase people and bump people up before we sent out evening invites. We have about 50% of the rsvps back now which is good because I hate the idea of chasing people.

We put the ceremony time on the invite, I think most people will know to arrive just before that.

We will put the ceremony time on the invitations, but on the website will add something like 'please make sure you are seated before this' - even though it's obvious, just to make it clear the time isn't an arrival time.

RSVP wise - ours is 2 months before. The venue needs numbers and food choices 1 month before, so that gives us a month to chase any late replies.

Our RSVP was 6 weeks before but only because christmas was smack bang in the middle of it otherwise I would have put it at a month probably. Unfortunately we didn't have the luxury of delaying evening invites as 75% of our guests are having to travel 500 miles to get to our wedding. Pretty sure no-one will mind being bumped from evening to day, people understand weddings are a lot of money! Traditionally invites were only sent out 3 months before, and RSVP deadline only a few weeks before the wedding.

Yes, I'm going to put an RSVP date of 2 months before too, which gives a month to chase up and can still have the final numbers and menu choices with the caterer a month beforehand.

I have only put the arrival time and, like others have said, hope common sense prevails!

Hi Miss Kem, I am also getting married 18th June, and I have written on the ceremony time. I have also put down the RSVP return date as 7 weeks before but this is because my OH and I are having a small family wedding (24 guests) so it won't take much for me to chase up people who haven't RSVP'ed. we are also having a BBQ (not a set meal that costs like £50 per head) so these are the things to consider - are you having an expensive set meal per head? Also do you have a lot of guests? In that case you may want to have your RSVP return date sooner.

Hope this helps?

(PS - I'm aware it's very early for me to have written invites this early for a small wedding but I'm doing as much as I can now, before mid-Feb as my OH and I have to move out of our house for a couple of weeks to have the electrics all newly re-wired. Fun! Not. Lol!)