RSVP,
explained properly.

RSVP stands for the French phrase répondez s'il vous plaît, 'reply, if you please', which in plain English is 'please reply'. It arrived in English invitations in the nineteenth century, when French was the language of formal manners, and it stuck because English has no four-letter way of saying the same thing. Today it is used as a noun ('we have had sixty RSVPs'), a verb ('have you RSVP'd?') and an instruction ('RSVP by 12 May').

Two things follow from the meaning. First, RSVP asks for an answer either way: a 'no' is as useful to the host as a 'yes', and silence is the one reply that helps nobody. Second, because the phrase already contains 'please', 'please RSVP' is technically redundant. Nobody minds, and it is clearer than the bare letters, so write it if it reads better on your card.

The related phrase 'regrets only' means the opposite arrangement: reply only if you cannot come. It saves the host from collecting a stack of yeses, but it also assumes that silence means attendance, which is a brave assumption with a caterer's deposit on the line. Use it for casual events with a known circle, never for a seated dinner.

An invitation is a question, and the answer runs the whole event. The caterer charges per head and needs a final number, usually seven to ten days before; the venue has a capacity and often a minimum; the seating plan cannot be made until the yeses are known; the dietary meals have to be counted; the favours, the chairs, the cake tiers and the bar all scale with the count. A wedding for 120 that turns out to be 95 has paid for 25 dinners nobody ate. One that turns out to be 130 has ten people without chairs.

That is why hosts get tense about replies, and why an unanswered invitation is not a small thing. It is not about manners for their own sake. It is about money, seats and the evening going smoothly for everyone who did reply.

The rules are short, and most of them come down to one idea: answer the question you were asked, promptly and completely.

Reply by the date, and earlier if you already know. Hosts are not being difficult; they are waiting on you to book the caterer. If you genuinely cannot decide by the deadline, say so before it passes and offer a date by which you will know. Reply for exactly the people named on the invitation. An invitation addressed to you alone is for you alone; one addressed to you 'and guest' includes a companion; one addressed to your family includes the children. Adding someone who was not invited puts the host in the position of refusing, which is worse than not asking.

Say what you were asked to say. If the reply asks for a meal choice, choose; if it asks about dietary needs, give the real ones, including the allergy you consider minor, because the kitchen does not. If your plans change after you have replied, tell the host the moment you know. A late 'no' is a small inconvenience; a no-show is a plated dinner nobody eats and a seat that stays empty beside someone. And if you decline, you owe no explanation beyond a warm sentence, though a short reason is kind.

Finally: reply through the channel the host chose. If the invitation gives a link, use the link, because that is where the host is counting. A reply by text to one of the couple at midnight may be heartfelt, but it may also never reach the list.

The host's side of the bargain is to make the question easy to answer. Most unanswered invitations are not rudeness; they are friction. A card that needs a stamp, a pen and a post box gets put on the fridge. A link that opens in a browser and asks three questions gets answered on the bus.

Be explicit about what you need: attendance, the number of people, the names of companions if you are seating them, meal choice if there is one, dietary needs, and anything specific to your event, such as a room need for guests travelling far. Give one deadline, written as a date, not 'as soon as possible'. Put it three to four weeks before the day so the caterer's final count is still comfortable. Tell guests how to reply and make that one way the easiest way.

Then expect the pattern every host sees: a burst of replies in the first days, a long quiet middle, and a third of all answers in the last seventy-two hours before the deadline. About one guest in seven will need a reminder. Send it the day after the deadline, warmly and once, to everyone who has not answered, and give them 48 hours. After that, a phone call to the few who matter, and a decision about the rest. Nobody should be shamed for being late, and nobody should be seated on the strength of silence.

The RSVP line on an invitation has to do four jobs in one or two sentences: say that a reply is needed, say by when, say how, and say what to include. Everything else is tone.

The classic formal form is 'RSVP by 12 May' followed by a card and a pre-addressed envelope, or today by a link or QR code. A more modern line reads 'Please reply by 12 May at the link below, with the number in your party and any dietary needs'. For an adults-only event, say it on the invitation, kindly and unambiguously: 'We love your children, but this is an evening for grown-ups'. For plus-ones, name the companion on the envelope or write 'and guest'; do not leave it to interpretation. For an event in more than one language, print the RSVP line in each, or use a reply page that switches language on its own.

The reply request should sit at the bottom of the invitation, after the date, time and place, and before the practical notes. On a card, give the reply its own small insert. On a digital invitation, make the reply button the largest thing on the page. The wording page in this guide has thirty lines to copy.

Reply cards are the tradition and, for some guests, a keepsake. They also cost a stamp each way, take a week to arrive, get lost, and reach the host as a pile of paper that still has to be typed into a list. For a wedding of 120, that is 120 envelopes to open and a spreadsheet to keep, and the meal choices arrive in handwriting.

Email and text replies are free and quick, but they arrive in ten places at once: the couple's two inboxes, three group chats, a parent's phone. The host becomes the integration layer, and the numbers drift.

An online reply page fixes the drift: one link, one place, one count. Guests answer from their phone in a minute, the host sees the total change in real time, dietary notes arrive typed, and a guest who changes plans can update the same reply instead of sending a second message. The honest downside is that a link asks something of guests who are not comfortable online, so give the grandparents a phone number as well, and enter their answer for them.

Response rates follow friction. Cards need chasing most; a link with the questions on one screen needs it least. Whatever you choose, the deadline and the reminder matter more than the medium.

Work backwards from the caterer. If the final count is due ten days before the event, the RSVP deadline goes three weeks before, which leaves a week to chase and two days of slack. Invitations go out six to eight weeks before the day, so guests have three to five weeks to answer. For a destination wedding or an event that needs travel, add a month at every step.

If the venue has a hard capacity, decide in advance what happens when the yeses reach it. A first-come list is honest and simple; a waiting list is kind; silently overbooking on the assumption that some will drop out is the gamble that ends with chairs in the corridor. A reply tool that closes the form at capacity and at the deadline takes the decision out of your hands on the night the last replies arrive.

And accept the silent third. Some guests will not answer, and a few will not answer even after the reminder. The deadline page of this guide has the exact chasing sequence, but the principle is: one warm reminder to everyone, a call to the people you actually need to know about, and a decision to count the rest as no.

'Can I bring someone?' is the question every host dreads and every guest eventually asks. The kind answer is a clear rule applied to everyone: partners and long-term companions are invited by name; single guests get a plus-one when the budget allows and not otherwise; nobody gets an exception because they asked nicely. Say the rule once, on the invitation or the reply page, and the question mostly stops arriving.

Children follow the same logic. 'Adults only' on the invitation, said warmly, settles it; the reply page can then simply not offer a child count. If children are welcome, ask for their number and ages, because the kitchen and the seating plan both need them, and a nine-year-old and a nine-month-old are different guests.

A late reply after the deadline is a yes if there is a chair and a no if there is not, and the host may say so without apology. A cancellation is bad luck, not an insult; thank the guest for telling you and move the spare seat to the waiting list. The one thing a host should never do is pay for a plated dinner in silence; the guest who cancels the day before and hears nothing back learns that it was fine, and it was not.

In Vowly Event the invitation is a web page with a reply form built in. You share one link or a QR code; guests open it in whatever browser they already have, on any phone, with nothing to install and no account to create. The page appears in the guest's own language, and the reply form asks what you set it to ask: attending or not, the number in their party and the names of companions, a meal choice from your own menu if you turn that on, dietary notes, whether they need a room, and, for an event with several parts, which parts they will come to.

Every answer lands in your guest list the moment it is sent, with the headcount, the party size and the dietary notes beside the name. The guest gets a confirmation by email in their language, with a calendar file that updates itself if the date or venue changes. A guest who needs to change their answer opens the same link and edits it; the count follows. You set the reply deadline and the form closes on its own when it passes; you set a capacity and the form stops accepting yeses when it is reached; you can add a PIN if the link should not be public.

Because the replies live next to the guest list, the seating planner, the menu and the caterer's export are all working from the same numbers. The reply is not a message you have to file; it is already in the place it needs to be. Collecting replies online is the paid side of Vowly Event, from €7.99 a month with a 14-day trial; planning the event, including the guest list, is free with no time limit.

Most of them are friction or ambiguity, and all of them are cheap to avoid.

Before the invitations go out, check these ten lines and the replies will look after themselves.