Free tool

What RSVP date
should I print?

Q: When should the RSVP deadline be?

Three to four weeks before the event, and at least a week before your venue's final-numbers date. That gap is not padding — it is the week you spend chasing the people who have not replied and building the seating plan. Larger guest lists need longer, because the final chase is done person by person.

Printing your venue's own deadline on the reply card leaves you no time to chase, no time to seat, and no room for the late changes that always come.

When should the RSVP deadline be?

Three to four weeks before the event, and at least a week before your venue's final-numbers date. That gap is not padding — it is the week you spend chasing the people who have not replied and building the seating plan. Larger guest lists need longer, because the final chase is done person by person.

Work backwards.

Event date

Venue needs final numbersAsk your caterer if unsure

Guests invited

Runs entirely in your browser, in your own time zone.

Why the gap scales with your guest list.

The first two reminders are the same amount of work whether you have fifty guests or five hundred — one message to whoever has not replied. The last stage is not. Chasing the final holdouts is done individually, by phone or in person, and that is per-person work.

So the calculator widens the buffer as the list grows: a week for a small event, ten days past a hundred and twenty guests, a fortnight past two hundred and fifty. If your list is large and your buffer is a week, the final fortnight becomes three jobs at once under time pressure.

Ask your venue what their real deadline is, not their stated one. Most caterers hold a small tolerance after the official final-numbers date — a handful of covers either way. Knowing that number is worth more than another week of chasing, and it is a two-minute question.

Common questions

What if guests reply after the deadline?

Some always will. That is what the buffer is for — a late yes inside your gap is an administrative task rather than a crisis. Past the venue's date it becomes a conversation with the caterer instead.

Should the RSVP date be on the invitation or the reply card?

The reply card, where the guest is looking when they act. Repeating it on the details card does no harm and helps guests replying online, who may never handle the reply card at all.

How do I write the date?

"Kindly reply by the fourteenth of May" for a formal suite, "Please reply by 14 May" for a modern one. Always include the month — a bare number is genuinely ambiguous to guests in other countries.

What if I have not booked a venue yet?

Use four weeks before the event as your working assumption, then confirm once the caterer's terms are signed. It is the conventional interval and it is rarely far off.

Then chase only the people who have not replied.

Every Evorrah commission includes the guest platform: one live list of who has replied and who has not, so a reminder reaches the second group and leaves everybody else alone.

See how guest replies work How to chase RSVPs

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