It is very important to get an accurate head count of your guests When you are planning a wedding. Getting people to respond, however, can be challenging at times. These are some suggestions on how to design your wedding response cards to be both beautiful and effective.The first thing that needs to be decided is whether or not to include response cards. Traditional wedding etiquette says that the proper way for your guests to let you know whether or not they will attend your wedding is with a handwritten note. In the lower left hand corner of the wedding invitations, print either R.s.v.p. or The favour of a reply is requested. This should be enough to inform your guests that you need to hear back from them, and believe it or not, it does actually work.
You then need to carefully design the wording and the style if you have come to the decision to use response cards. There are a couple of main options in terms of the design of the cards. Since they will be mailed as an enclosure in the wedding invitations, the response cards should coordinate with the invitations both in style and degree of formality. The most common choice for the cards is to have them made in the same paper and printing as the invitations. The response cards are quite a bit smaller than the invites and usually come with a little mailing envelope, complete with the host's address and proper postage. Sometimes couples will try to save money on the response cards by using a postcard instead of a card and envelope, which will reduce the cost of the stamps.
A more effective form of response card is to personalize each one with the name of the guests invited. It would look something like this: Mr. Jack will/will not attend. Mrs. Jack will/will not attend. The favor of a reply is requested by June 19th. Certainly this is more labor intensive than the standard response card format, but it also leaves no room for error. Having individual cards printed by a stationer would be prohibitively expensive, so it is best to do this you or enlist the aid of a bridesmaid.
You can hire a calligrapher or ask a bridesmaid with excellent handwriting to personalize each response card with the names of the guests. Either print the cards on your home printer using a card stock that matches your invitations, or have the stationer create the cards, except for the names. You would not pay a friend for this job like you would a professional calligrapher, but if one of your attendants puts in long hours on this project; you should thank her with a special present, beyond the bridesmaid gifts that you are giving to your entire group of attendants.
