What is the best way to collect wedding RSVPs?
One main digital channel plus one paper fallback. Ask the bulk of your list by text or through a wedding-website form — both get you a reply-by date three to four weeks before the wedding — and mail stamped reply cards only to the specific households you know will not reply online. As a planning estimate, a texted ask gets an answer inside a day and roughly nine households in ten answer unchased; a mailed reply card takes about twelve days and roughly half of them need chasing.
How do you collect RSVPs without a wedding website?
You do not need one. Ask by text, one message per household, with the reply-by date in the first line and a yes-or-no answer as the only thing required — that is the fastest of the four channels and it needs nothing installed. A printed reply card with a stamped return envelope works without any internet at all, and a QR code on the invitation can point at a free form rather than a full website. A website is a good place to put travel and timing details; it is not a requirement for collecting an answer.
Can you ask for wedding RSVPs by text?
Yes — and the question worth answering first is how much of your list it actually reaches. Count the households you have a current mobile number for, by name. If that is most of them, text is your main channel: it answers fastest, needs no account and no URL, and it buys you the latest reply-by date of the four. If it is only half the list, text is the fallback and something printed is the main route. Either way the households with no number are getting a card or a phone call, so decide which before anything goes to print.
How many ways to reply should you offer guests?
Two: one main channel and one fallback, both landing in the same list. Offering four routes feels generous and produces four partial lists that have to be merged every week, with duplicate replies you cannot tell apart. Print the fallback beside the main route — the link written out under a QR code, or a phone number on a reply card — so nobody is stranded, and reconcile everything to one row per household.
How far ahead of the wedding should you ask for replies?
Far enough ahead that you still have time to chase, which in practice means the channel decides most of it and your catering contract decides the rest. Text buys a reply-by three weeks out, a form or QR code four, printed cards five. Leave at least ten clear days between whichever of those you land on and the day your caterer needs a final number. The free calculator on this page dates the whole chain from your wedding date.
What do you do if guests never reply at all?
Give it about three days past your reply-by date, then contact the silent households one at a time and change channel at each rung: a short text, then a dated message naming the day your caterer needs numbers, then a phone call. Set a stop-waiting date roughly two weeks after the reply-by date and at least three days before the vendor count, mark everyone still silent as a no, and send one short message saying you have had to close the numbers.