A few months ago I wrote about what should be included on a response card. Your guests reply makes all the difference in both the final planning that you'll do. It is also guaranteed to either increase or decrease your stress level those last weeks before your wedding.
This week one of our clients sent us their wedding invitation. I could not have been more thrilled by what I found and just had to share them with you.
These pictures are just taken with my iphone, so please be forgiving!
What's right about the below response card? Oh let me count the ways...
- The response date is at least 6 weeks prior to the wedding date. This gives us enough time to track down the people who don't return their cards, plan exact transportation schedules for the guest guides, plan seating at the wedding dinner and to order the appropriate number of stationery & welcome bag items. Trust me, there's never time to spare with this part.
- A double name line. This means we'll know the first and last name of each guest. This is important particularly if you're doing welcome bags and the +1 has the room reserved under their name. Finally for accuracy on escort & place cards. I don't know about you, but & guest on an escort card never made me feel special.
- Number attending each event. This will enable us to give exact head counts for the pre and post wedding events so that we don't end up paying for guests who may not even be in town.
- Initialing the entree selections. Heavens to Betsy; this is the biggest relief ever. How else would we know who has the chicken and who has the beef? Trust me, its very impressive when the proper meal just magically gets set in front of you.
- Clarifying that there will be event transportation well in advance will help your guests with making their ground transportation.
- Letting your guests know that transportation is limited to certain locations could help influence your guests to stay at the host hotels.
- Knowing of any guests planning on using their own vehicles will allow us to reserve just what we need and not have a bunch of empty shuttles (waste of money!).
- Arrival, hotel and reservation name information makes welcome bag delivery as simple as it should be. Its truly the only way we can give the host hotels a perfect list that will be easy for them to follow and make sure that every single invitee receives their welcome bag when they arrive (and not 2 days later or never).
