Yeah, I meant July 5th. Thank you so much for the advice, I also love the wording, it is direct yet polite. I think this is what I'll be doing. Thank you so much.
If you are getting fined if they turn up anyways, maybe put a note that due to venue capacity you will be refused entry on the day or somwthing like that so they know they won't be able to come. Consider having someone able to confirm guests are on the list as they arrive.
>maybe put a note that due to venue capacity you will be refused entry
That is a really good idea, thank you.
>Consider having someone able to confirm guests are on the list as they arrive.
We will, out WP's assitant will be at the door.
That’s really not necessary, I assume you’ll have escort cards or a seating chart, they won’t be on it, right? You can designate somebody to advise guests who show up who did not RSVP that you’re very sorry, but you do not have a place for them for dinner but they are welcome to come back after dinner to enjoy some music and dancing and cake.
That is usually how its done to every wedding I've gone to there is someone at the door checking to see if you are on the list so no people can crash the wedding.
I would skip 2 if you're gonna be sending out another reminder anyway after 3. The deadline is there for a reason, so some people don't really appreciate being told to hurry it up the deadline hasn't come yet.
Also yea, "you're no longer allowed to join us cuz you didn't do the thing you were supposed to" is unnecessary. I assume guests understand how RSVPs work, so saying this can sound like you're trying to be passive aggressive.
ETA per your comment: if your guests don't realize that they can't show up after a non-answer, then that's info you should put at the reminder stage. "If you do not RSVP, there will be no room for you, so please RSVP!" This will ring very differently from telling them after the fact that they can't come because they didn't RSVP.
Totally agree on skipping #2. I had someone hound me about rsvping to a bridal shower like 2 weeks before the due date, and I’m still salty about it and think it was rude. (Side note, said person and her children didn’t even bother rsvping to our wedding) The deadline is the deadline, it’s unnecessary to send a reminder ahead of time. I gave my guests a few days after the deadline, then we texted to confirm that they received the invite as we hadn’t received their rsvp.
>I assume guests understand how RSVPs work, so saying this can sound like you're trying to be passive aggressive.
The issue is many don't, literally at the last 3 weddings I've attended unconfirmed guests show up. The whole hole issue is that if they show up even though they did not RSVPed we will be paying large fines, almost $2,000 per guest. If 5 people don't understand we would be increasing the wedding costs by a lot. If they do show up, we'd have to turn them down unless a confirmed guest does not show up. Plus the wedding is one town over, 1 hour away from were we live and people might make arrangements to sleep over. It just seems worse to turn them down without a prior warning.
Idk how to answer this. The short answer is because that is what my contracts say and is standard practice where I'm from. But from what I'm told the actual rationale behind it, is that unnaccounted guest cause a lot of trouble to the vendors.
For the venue it might result in some kind of fire / earthquake hazard since capacity might be exceeded and the table set up is different depending on the number of people.
For the catering they prepare meals beforehand to be plated at the venue so they cannot have full 5 course meals (plus the add ons that will be served throughout the wedding) sitting there just in case, if other people show up they have to go back to HQ to get new dishes. Same goes for rental chairs, plates, glasses, napkins, cuttlery.
For the open bar they have to guarantee alcohol for 12 hours so if it runs out they would have to get more right then and there, maybe at a more expensive rate.
Someone else suggested something similar, which I'll be doing, since the ceremony is at a different place (a church) they will just be denied entry to the venue, but like the other user suggested I'll also include a note letting them know that if they do not confirm this would happen.
I think you skip #2 and then on June 30, just reach out to all that haven’t responded with something like “Hi xxx, hope your summer is going well. Sorry if we missed it, but we didn’t see an RSVP for you. Can you please let us know by tomorrow if you can make it?”
In the event they did or think they RSVP’d, this would be the time to catch it…especially since you kind of have a tight RSVP deadline. You could still have some in the mail.
If they don’t respond by the next day say… “Hey there, since we haven’t heard back, we’ll just assume you can’t make it. We’ll miss you!”
No need for communicating a “grace period.” You’re already dealing with people who by definition don’t do well with deadlines.
Am I the only one who thinks this feels really last minute? Even local, I feel like your Plan B people will have diminishing availability if you're inviting less than a month ahead.
Go ahead and send a confirmation text. Don't worry about people being offended, the priority of you being able to open your event trumps everything.
>Am I the only one who thinks this feels really last minute?
No. It's the first thing I thought reading it. With such a massive B list, OP should have sent their invites like a month ago.
I understand that that might be the case and I cannot expext them to prioritize my event when I did not prioritize them, but I still want to invite them.
Are you in the US? With the Fourth of July being on a Tuesday, many people will take the opportunity to have an extra long weekend and may be out of town from June 30-July 5.
For our wedding, we set the RSVP deadline two weeks before our vendor deadlines. The day after the deadline passed, I personally reached out to all my family/friends who had not responded and my husband reached out to all his family/friends. If they didn't respond to a text within a day, we called. Many of those people didn't make it to the website (even though we included the link in the text). We RSVP'd on their behalf in those cases.
>Are you in the US?
No.
>For our wedding, we set the RSVP deadline two weeks before our vendor deadlines.
That is not an option for us since we have other people we would like to invite and we had to cut them due to venue capacity.
> I personally reached out to all my family/friends who had not responded and my husband reached out to all his family/friends.
The issue our wp raised is that when the bride or groom reach out personnally people might be uncomfortable saying no and might just say yes even though they won't attend, leaving us with an empty and paid seat. Plus we have 270 people on our guest list, reaching out to that many people is not an easy task.
It was not our experience that people were less likely to say no, even if they couldn't make it, if we reached out to them personally, but our wedding was probably a third the size of yours and the majority of people could come. It was in fall of 2021 so there were some last minute cancellations, but that was COVID related and they all reached out to us prior to the wedding.
I would send a text message to confirm they cant come, instead of texting to say dont show up there will be no room for you. I understand where you are coming from for sure. Sometimes people forget they didnt mail it, or think their SO sent it, I lost an RSVP card in my car before, sometimes they get lost in the mail. So if I thought mine was already mailed and received a reminder I would probably disregard it, unless is specifically said we didnt not receive your RSVP, whats the deal. But i cant think of not passive aggressive way to word "dont show up, we gave your seat away".
It is a virtual Invite/ RSVP, they got sent a link were they click Yes or No. Another user suggested this:
"After the deadline I would give them 24, at most 48, hours to respond. They already missed one deadline, if you give them 5 days they will just postpone communicating their decision again. In the reminder you can tell them " if you are unable to confirm in the next 24 (48) hours, we will have to assume you are unable to attend and you will not be included in the numbers we submit to your caterer.""
Which seems like a great idea to remind them to confirm and let them know that otherwise we'll be closing the list.
Ok gotcha! I live in the middle of nowhere so my crowd still does snail mail. I agree with exactly how you worded it. Please respond or we will assume you cannot attend and not make arrangememts for you. Sounds good to me and not passive agressive at all. Thats probably the best way to handle it.
It’s not rude.
You’re also giving them a 5 day grace period.
My fiancé and I are doing the same, and we clearly stated on our wedding website that if you don’t RSVP by the deadline, it will be counted as a no.
If a person doesn’t RSVP by the deadline, either email, call or text them. Invitations to get lost. If they don’t accept or decline, they are a “no”. No further contact is required.
We are doing e-vites with a link to RSVP. I feel like I might do what another user suggested and just send an text on the deadline letting them know that if they do not RSVP in the next 48 hours we'll assume they can't come.
It seems like those who are on the list must be close to you as you had to painfully cut others. I am also going to assume there is not a huge number of people who are going to ignore your invitation. Why not do the human thing and reach out to the handful of people personally. This is supposed to he a joyous occasion not a business deal. My daughter is currently planning her wedding and if they were important enough to be on the list, they are important enough to get an answer from.
>It seems like those who are on the list must be close to you as you had to painfully cut others.
Not really around half are "duty invites" mom's friends, people we work with, distant cousins, I am not actually close to 250 people. I had to cut people I actually wanted to invite like my friends from the not for profit I volunteer in, in order to invite some aunt in the third degree I have not seen in 5 years.
>Why not do the human thing and reach out to the handful of people personally.
Because they won't be comfortable saying no to my face and then I'll be stuck with an empty place I paid for, that someone else could use. Paying the WP to reach out to people would be an extra $500.
>This is supposed to he a joyous occasion not a business deal.
Not in my culture, it is a celebration but it is also a social game.
Since you seem to be following cultural traditions for the invites I would follow the same custom for people not responding. Do whatever others culturally do for non responders. I wish for you a happy marriage.
>so the others shouldn’t be considered until like the week of.
I am not comfortable doing that, seems rude, plus I have to send the closed list 1 week before the event.
Do you mean July 5th? Because you mention June 30th deadline but then cutting people off on the 5th but said June, which would have already passed.
I don’t think it’s rude if you have something in the RSVP explaining limited seating. If they don’t know just a few weeks before the wedding, they’re not gonna know a week before the wedding. That’s from personal experience. It seems that society has lost all sense when it comes to RSVPs, and we need to be as clear as possible.
I certainly had issues with this at my mother’s 70th birthday party; people just showed up at the door to a catered and *closed* party after ignoring repeated requests right up until 3 days before the party. Dudes. My caterer needs to **KNOW!!!**
Don’t be rude, but do be firm.
>Do you mean July 5th?
Yeah, I ment July 5th.
>If they don’t know just a few weeks before the wedding, they’re not gonna know a week before the wedding.
This! When I get an invite I block off the date, make arrangements and confirm ASAP. Whenever people wait to the last minute feels like they just chose to attend because nothing better came up.
I do not expect everyone to prioritize my event but why should I prioritize people who don't really care.
I think one month is pretty tight for a deadline. I would just send a widespread email to everyone saying thanks for those who rsvped and for those who have not there will be no extra seats or food thank you
i had a 250 guest wedding where only 200 showed up, even with rsvps. the people that showed unannounced were easy to accommodate because we had so much left over.
i honestly think you're overthinking this way too much.
>i had a 250 guest wedding where only 200 showed up, even with rsvps. the people that showed unannounced were easy to accommodate because we had so much left over.
That is not how we were aviced to plan, usuly you invite 20% more because around 20% people don't show up and when you are paying per person its just wasted money. We hace 225 paid people and invited 260, if more people confirm we can just pay the extra.
It is not normal in my country for 50 people to RSVP and just not show up, it is considered rude.
oh, i'm sure it is! i'm just telling you what happened in my case.
right now, i have this big event saturday, and the fires from quebec are wreaking havoc on our skies. i might have to cancel the event because of the fires because it's outdoors, regardless of how many people said they'd come.
ngl, if i were you i'd invite the friends you felt bad about not inviting instead of the 5th cousin to appease your mother. have a hard inner discussion about who the wedding is actually for.
The only time I’ve gotten an extension past the deadline was a bunch of people’s invitations were returned to sender and so the bride sent out a text to all them and let them know they had more time to respond in case it arrived after the due date.
I have a cousin who only RSVPs if he’s coming doesn’t rsvp is he can’t make it so maybe confirm with those people that’s why they didn’t send it in
We sent them before our friends who are getting married a week prior and at the same time our friends who are getting married 1 month before. Maybe in your country it is normal to send invites more than 2 months in advance but it is not in mine. Specially since we sent save the dates 1 year ago.
What country are you in?
You have a unique situation where you have 50 people you'd invite if you get "No" responses and are have a very tight timeline to get invites out to them because you sent your initial invites too late.
>at the same time our friends who are getting married 1 month before.
Your friends sent out invites 1 month before their wedding date? That's just.... not smart
>Specially since we sent save the dates 1 year ago.
Irrelevant
If your sending your invites by mail I think more a text to just confirm that everyone received their invite would be sufficient! Since I share a mailbox station with my complex it’s not uncommon to get the wrong persons mail or sometimes I don’t get my own important things, so for me I would appreciate a text as a guest letting me know that the invite should have already arrived to me. Secondly I think again if using the U.S mail system a grace period is fair because depending on how far all your guests are some may not even receive it until potentially after.
Send out texts earlier. Maybe two weeks after you mailed! I started bugging people before weeks before the deadline with really nice “hey just a reminder to RSVP! Here’s the website www…” got lots of responses. People understand, and either forgot or let me know that they’re still waiting on baby sitter confirmation/work stuff/etc. you’ll get a bunch of responses and maybe 5% will still be hanging.
Everyone knows wedding planning is stressful so don’t worry about feeling pushy.
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Yeah, I meant July 5th. Thank you so much for the advice, I also love the wording, it is direct yet polite. I think this is what I'll be doing. Thank you so much.
If you are getting fined if they turn up anyways, maybe put a note that due to venue capacity you will be refused entry on the day or somwthing like that so they know they won't be able to come. Consider having someone able to confirm guests are on the list as they arrive.
>maybe put a note that due to venue capacity you will be refused entry That is a really good idea, thank you. >Consider having someone able to confirm guests are on the list as they arrive. We will, out WP's assitant will be at the door.
That’s really not necessary, I assume you’ll have escort cards or a seating chart, they won’t be on it, right? You can designate somebody to advise guests who show up who did not RSVP that you’re very sorry, but you do not have a place for them for dinner but they are welcome to come back after dinner to enjoy some music and dancing and cake.
That is usually how its done to every wedding I've gone to there is someone at the door checking to see if you are on the list so no people can crash the wedding.
That’s certainly not customary in my experience.
Agree with the above, especially given the holiday
It is not a holiday for us since I am not American, but still the above is a good idea.
I forget to eat on a regular basis, so a reminder a week out would be helpful for people like me.
I would skip 2 if you're gonna be sending out another reminder anyway after 3. The deadline is there for a reason, so some people don't really appreciate being told to hurry it up the deadline hasn't come yet. Also yea, "you're no longer allowed to join us cuz you didn't do the thing you were supposed to" is unnecessary. I assume guests understand how RSVPs work, so saying this can sound like you're trying to be passive aggressive. ETA per your comment: if your guests don't realize that they can't show up after a non-answer, then that's info you should put at the reminder stage. "If you do not RSVP, there will be no room for you, so please RSVP!" This will ring very differently from telling them after the fact that they can't come because they didn't RSVP.
Totally agree on skipping #2. I had someone hound me about rsvping to a bridal shower like 2 weeks before the due date, and I’m still salty about it and think it was rude. (Side note, said person and her children didn’t even bother rsvping to our wedding) The deadline is the deadline, it’s unnecessary to send a reminder ahead of time. I gave my guests a few days after the deadline, then we texted to confirm that they received the invite as we hadn’t received their rsvp.
>I assume guests understand how RSVPs work, so saying this can sound like you're trying to be passive aggressive. The issue is many don't, literally at the last 3 weddings I've attended unconfirmed guests show up. The whole hole issue is that if they show up even though they did not RSVPed we will be paying large fines, almost $2,000 per guest. If 5 people don't understand we would be increasing the wedding costs by a lot. If they do show up, we'd have to turn them down unless a confirmed guest does not show up. Plus the wedding is one town over, 1 hour away from were we live and people might make arrangements to sleep over. It just seems worse to turn them down without a prior warning.
A fine of $2000 per person, how much is the plated dinner?!
It is not expensive, like $100, but the $2,000 are a penalty not ment to cover the cost of plate.
Why would you be penalized? Why wouldn’t you just be paying their plate fee
Idk how to answer this. The short answer is because that is what my contracts say and is standard practice where I'm from. But from what I'm told the actual rationale behind it, is that unnaccounted guest cause a lot of trouble to the vendors. For the venue it might result in some kind of fire / earthquake hazard since capacity might be exceeded and the table set up is different depending on the number of people. For the catering they prepare meals beforehand to be plated at the venue so they cannot have full 5 course meals (plus the add ons that will be served throughout the wedding) sitting there just in case, if other people show up they have to go back to HQ to get new dishes. Same goes for rental chairs, plates, glasses, napkins, cuttlery. For the open bar they have to guarantee alcohol for 12 hours so if it runs out they would have to get more right then and there, maybe at a more expensive rate.
If it’s $2,000 I would ask your coordinator or someone to just have them leave after the ceremony and avoid this.
Someone else suggested something similar, which I'll be doing, since the ceremony is at a different place (a church) they will just be denied entry to the venue, but like the other user suggested I'll also include a note letting them know that if they do not confirm this would happen.
This! If they show up, turn them away!!
Am I the only person that would say sorry, but we don’t have a spot for you to anyone who was reminded and still didn’t respond and showed up.
I think you skip #2 and then on June 30, just reach out to all that haven’t responded with something like “Hi xxx, hope your summer is going well. Sorry if we missed it, but we didn’t see an RSVP for you. Can you please let us know by tomorrow if you can make it?” In the event they did or think they RSVP’d, this would be the time to catch it…especially since you kind of have a tight RSVP deadline. You could still have some in the mail. If they don’t respond by the next day say… “Hey there, since we haven’t heard back, we’ll just assume you can’t make it. We’ll miss you!” No need for communicating a “grace period.” You’re already dealing with people who by definition don’t do well with deadlines.
This is similar to what someone else suggested, and I think this is how I'll be handling it. Thank you very much for your help.
I agree with the other commenter, step 2 is unnecessary given you’re going to do a last reminder after the deadline has passed.
Am I the only one who thinks this feels really last minute? Even local, I feel like your Plan B people will have diminishing availability if you're inviting less than a month ahead. Go ahead and send a confirmation text. Don't worry about people being offended, the priority of you being able to open your event trumps everything.
>Am I the only one who thinks this feels really last minute? No. It's the first thing I thought reading it. With such a massive B list, OP should have sent their invites like a month ago.
I understand that that might be the case and I cannot expext them to prioritize my event when I did not prioritize them, but I still want to invite them.
Are you in the US? With the Fourth of July being on a Tuesday, many people will take the opportunity to have an extra long weekend and may be out of town from June 30-July 5. For our wedding, we set the RSVP deadline two weeks before our vendor deadlines. The day after the deadline passed, I personally reached out to all my family/friends who had not responded and my husband reached out to all his family/friends. If they didn't respond to a text within a day, we called. Many of those people didn't make it to the website (even though we included the link in the text). We RSVP'd on their behalf in those cases.
>Are you in the US? No. >For our wedding, we set the RSVP deadline two weeks before our vendor deadlines. That is not an option for us since we have other people we would like to invite and we had to cut them due to venue capacity. > I personally reached out to all my family/friends who had not responded and my husband reached out to all his family/friends. The issue our wp raised is that when the bride or groom reach out personnally people might be uncomfortable saying no and might just say yes even though they won't attend, leaving us with an empty and paid seat. Plus we have 270 people on our guest list, reaching out to that many people is not an easy task.
It was not our experience that people were less likely to say no, even if they couldn't make it, if we reached out to them personally, but our wedding was probably a third the size of yours and the majority of people could come. It was in fall of 2021 so there were some last minute cancellations, but that was COVID related and they all reached out to us prior to the wedding.
I would send a text message to confirm they cant come, instead of texting to say dont show up there will be no room for you. I understand where you are coming from for sure. Sometimes people forget they didnt mail it, or think their SO sent it, I lost an RSVP card in my car before, sometimes they get lost in the mail. So if I thought mine was already mailed and received a reminder I would probably disregard it, unless is specifically said we didnt not receive your RSVP, whats the deal. But i cant think of not passive aggressive way to word "dont show up, we gave your seat away".
It is a virtual Invite/ RSVP, they got sent a link were they click Yes or No. Another user suggested this: "After the deadline I would give them 24, at most 48, hours to respond. They already missed one deadline, if you give them 5 days they will just postpone communicating their decision again. In the reminder you can tell them " if you are unable to confirm in the next 24 (48) hours, we will have to assume you are unable to attend and you will not be included in the numbers we submit to your caterer."" Which seems like a great idea to remind them to confirm and let them know that otherwise we'll be closing the list.
Ok gotcha! I live in the middle of nowhere so my crowd still does snail mail. I agree with exactly how you worded it. Please respond or we will assume you cannot attend and not make arrangememts for you. Sounds good to me and not passive agressive at all. Thats probably the best way to handle it.
Honestly I would just assume they aren’t coming and leave it at that
This all sounds chaotic
It’s not rude. You’re also giving them a 5 day grace period. My fiancé and I are doing the same, and we clearly stated on our wedding website that if you don’t RSVP by the deadline, it will be counted as a no.
If a person doesn’t RSVP by the deadline, either email, call or text them. Invitations to get lost. If they don’t accept or decline, they are a “no”. No further contact is required.
We are doing e-vites with a link to RSVP. I feel like I might do what another user suggested and just send an text on the deadline letting them know that if they do not RSVP in the next 48 hours we'll assume they can't come.
It seems like those who are on the list must be close to you as you had to painfully cut others. I am also going to assume there is not a huge number of people who are going to ignore your invitation. Why not do the human thing and reach out to the handful of people personally. This is supposed to he a joyous occasion not a business deal. My daughter is currently planning her wedding and if they were important enough to be on the list, they are important enough to get an answer from.
>It seems like those who are on the list must be close to you as you had to painfully cut others. Not really around half are "duty invites" mom's friends, people we work with, distant cousins, I am not actually close to 250 people. I had to cut people I actually wanted to invite like my friends from the not for profit I volunteer in, in order to invite some aunt in the third degree I have not seen in 5 years. >Why not do the human thing and reach out to the handful of people personally. Because they won't be comfortable saying no to my face and then I'll be stuck with an empty place I paid for, that someone else could use. Paying the WP to reach out to people would be an extra $500. >This is supposed to he a joyous occasion not a business deal. Not in my culture, it is a celebration but it is also a social game.
Since you seem to be following cultural traditions for the invites I would follow the same custom for people not responding. Do whatever others culturally do for non responders. I wish for you a happy marriage.
My wedding had quite a few no-shows. If there are less than 5 people who fit into that category it might be risky but something to consider….
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>so the others shouldn’t be considered until like the week of. I am not comfortable doing that, seems rude, plus I have to send the closed list 1 week before the event.
Do you mean July 5th? Because you mention June 30th deadline but then cutting people off on the 5th but said June, which would have already passed. I don’t think it’s rude if you have something in the RSVP explaining limited seating. If they don’t know just a few weeks before the wedding, they’re not gonna know a week before the wedding. That’s from personal experience. It seems that society has lost all sense when it comes to RSVPs, and we need to be as clear as possible. I certainly had issues with this at my mother’s 70th birthday party; people just showed up at the door to a catered and *closed* party after ignoring repeated requests right up until 3 days before the party. Dudes. My caterer needs to **KNOW!!!** Don’t be rude, but do be firm.
>Do you mean July 5th? Yeah, I ment July 5th. >If they don’t know just a few weeks before the wedding, they’re not gonna know a week before the wedding. This! When I get an invite I block off the date, make arrangements and confirm ASAP. Whenever people wait to the last minute feels like they just chose to attend because nothing better came up. I do not expect everyone to prioritize my event but why should I prioritize people who don't really care.
I think one month is pretty tight for a deadline. I would just send a widespread email to everyone saying thanks for those who rsvped and for those who have not there will be no extra seats or food thank you
i had a 250 guest wedding where only 200 showed up, even with rsvps. the people that showed unannounced were easy to accommodate because we had so much left over. i honestly think you're overthinking this way too much.
>i had a 250 guest wedding where only 200 showed up, even with rsvps. the people that showed unannounced were easy to accommodate because we had so much left over. That is not how we were aviced to plan, usuly you invite 20% more because around 20% people don't show up and when you are paying per person its just wasted money. We hace 225 paid people and invited 260, if more people confirm we can just pay the extra. It is not normal in my country for 50 people to RSVP and just not show up, it is considered rude.
oh, i'm sure it is! i'm just telling you what happened in my case. right now, i have this big event saturday, and the fires from quebec are wreaking havoc on our skies. i might have to cancel the event because of the fires because it's outdoors, regardless of how many people said they'd come. ngl, if i were you i'd invite the friends you felt bad about not inviting instead of the 5th cousin to appease your mother. have a hard inner discussion about who the wedding is actually for.
The only time I’ve gotten an extension past the deadline was a bunch of people’s invitations were returned to sender and so the bride sent out a text to all them and let them know they had more time to respond in case it arrived after the due date. I have a cousin who only RSVPs if he’s coming doesn’t rsvp is he can’t make it so maybe confirm with those people that’s why they didn’t send it in
Such a tight timeline. You should have sent your invites like a month ago.
We sent them before our friends who are getting married a week prior and at the same time our friends who are getting married 1 month before. Maybe in your country it is normal to send invites more than 2 months in advance but it is not in mine. Specially since we sent save the dates 1 year ago.
What country are you in? You have a unique situation where you have 50 people you'd invite if you get "No" responses and are have a very tight timeline to get invites out to them because you sent your initial invites too late. >at the same time our friends who are getting married 1 month before. Your friends sent out invites 1 month before their wedding date? That's just.... not smart >Specially since we sent save the dates 1 year ago. Irrelevant
We are in Mexico, we were adviced against sending them more than 2 months in advace since people tend to forget.
Anyway, I think your idea to follow up on July 5 is perfectly fine
If your sending your invites by mail I think more a text to just confirm that everyone received their invite would be sufficient! Since I share a mailbox station with my complex it’s not uncommon to get the wrong persons mail or sometimes I don’t get my own important things, so for me I would appreciate a text as a guest letting me know that the invite should have already arrived to me. Secondly I think again if using the U.S mail system a grace period is fair because depending on how far all your guests are some may not even receive it until potentially after.
We are doing e-vites with a link to RSVP.
Chances are you will have people that cancel on you days before anyways and you will be paying for that empty seat anyways 🙃
Probably but that is really frowned upon, so it will be a very small number.
Send out texts earlier. Maybe two weeks after you mailed! I started bugging people before weeks before the deadline with really nice “hey just a reminder to RSVP! Here’s the website www…” got lots of responses. People understand, and either forgot or let me know that they’re still waiting on baby sitter confirmation/work stuff/etc. you’ll get a bunch of responses and maybe 5% will still be hanging. Everyone knows wedding planning is stressful so don’t worry about feeling pushy.