Wedding websites with RSVP — how it works

Guests visit your website — from the address on your invitation, a QR code, or a link you message them — find the RSVP section, and answer a short form. Each response is saved against their household, and you see the running list. There’s no app to install and no account for them to create; anything that adds a step reduces your response rate.

Two details matter more than people expect. First, guests should be able to reply on a phone in under a minute, because that’s when most of them will do it. Second, they should be able to come back and change an answer without emailing you, because plans change.

Worth asking:

• Names of everyone in the household who is attending
• Attending or unable to attend, per person rather than per invitation
• Dietary requirements and allergies, as free text
• Meal choices, if your caterer needs them in advance
• Which events they’re coming to, if there is more than one
• An email address or mobile number, so you can reach them with updates
• A song request, if you want one — it’s the question guests enjoy most

Usually not worth asking:

• Postal addresses, unless you still have thank-you cards to send
• Anything you won’t act on — every extra field costs you responses
• Open-ended “any comments?” boxes that you’ll then have to triage

Use one free-text field per person and label it clearly — “dietary requirements or allergies” — rather than tick boxes. Tick boxes never cover the real answers, which tend to be specific: coeliac, severe nut allergy, no shellfish, vegan but eats honey, pregnant so no soft cheese.

Keep allergies visually distinct from preferences when you pass the list on. A caterer needs to know which entries are a medical requirement and which are a dislike, and that distinction is usually lost the moment everything is merged into one column.

Only ask if your caterer genuinely needs numbers in advance — many now prefer to serve a set menu with alternatives arranged quietly on the day. If you do ask, list the dishes with their allergens, ask per person rather than per household, and give a children’s option if children are invited. Then keep a running count as answers arrive, so you find out about a fifty-forty split in good time rather than the week before.

The kindest approach is to decide the invitation scope before the RSVP opens and let the form reflect it, rather than leaving guests to guess. If a household is invited with a named partner, name them. If a plus-one is offered without a name, ask for the name at RSVP so place cards and dietary answers line up. If a household is invited without a plus-one, simply don’t offer the field — an absent question causes far less awkwardness than a declined request.

Same for children: if they’re invited, ask for names and ages so the caterer and any childcare can plan. If they’re not, say so once, warmly, in the guest information rather than in the form.

For a welcome dinner, the wedding day and a Sunday breakfast, ask separately for each event. One combined yes tells you nothing useful about Friday night numbers. Show only the events a given household is invited to, and keep each event’s time, place and dress code next to its question, so guests answer with the right information in front of them.

Set the RSVP deadline three to four weeks before your caterer’s final numbers date — that gap is where the chasing happens. Expect to chase: around a fifth of guests will need a nudge regardless of how good your website is. A short personal message works better than a group email, and it helps enormously if you can see at a glance exactly who hasn’t replied. After the deadline, leave the site up but close the form politely with a line telling latecomers to get in touch directly.

Every package includes RSVP handling set up around your actual day, not a generic form. We build the questions with you, keep the responses in one place, and send you the list in a format your caterer and venue can use — including a clean allergy summary. If your plans change, you message us and we change the form; you don’t log into anything.

For more complex weddings — multiple events, guest-specific invitations, two languages — that logic is part of our Signature and Bespoke packages. And if you’d like to be able to tweak your own wording, editor access is included with the packages that list it.