For hosts writing the rules as they go
When to send, what to include, how long to wait: the plain rules that grew up around the digital reply button, and what RSVP by actually means when guests answer by tapping.
The oldest courtesy in invitations is still the same: give people enough notice to decide honestly, then take their answer seriously. What a reply button changed is the speed of the exchange — a guest can answer in fifteen seconds while waiting for a train. That has quietly raised expectations on both sides. Guests now expect to be able to answer simply and to be believed. Hosts now expect an answer to be a click, not a chore. Etiquette grew up around the button to meet those expectations, and it is worth knowing the shape of it.
The working windows, generous enough for real life:
The proper notice is measured in months — long enough for travel, leave and a hotel. If the date is not final, an early heads-up beats a perfect invitation arriving too late to plan around.
Two or three weeks. Earlier starts to mislead: answers given four months out are guesses wearing good manners.
A month or so, and consider the guest of honour's energy — the etiquette of these occasions includes not adding a second event to someone already at the centre of one.
For a spontaneous gathering, say so in the very first line. A message that admits it is late gives guests the honest grace of answering no without guilt.
The courtesy of completeness — everything a guest needs, inside the invitation:
A reply deadline is a gift to the guest as much as to the host: it tells them how long their answer is wanted and when the count closes. Put the date on the page itself, so forwarded copies carry it. When the deadline passes, do not chase in the chat where the original message landed; a public list of the unanswered is the digital equivalent of a name read aloud in class.
This is what reminders are for: the host triggers them, and only the people who have not answered receive one. A single, polite nudge, days before the plan is fixed — no audience, no guilt, no scrollback. The guest who missed the message replies in relief; the guest who meant to decline finally does; and you know either way, which is the whole point.
The reply request is the part every guest reaches first:
Please reply by the first of August, so we can tell the venue how many chairs to keep. The button below takes a minute, and it is the only way your answer reaches the list.
Tap yes or no by Friday the fifteenth — cake is a numbers game and I would hate to have bought six portions for twelve people.
No ceremony required: if you can make it, reply on the page; if you cannot, say nothing and I will assume the drinks were better without me.
How it works
Pick the date the message goes out and the deadline the page will show, working from the occasion — months for a wedding, weeks for a party — so the reply arrives while plans can still change.
Detail, directions, plus-one limits, and the RSVP button with the deadline printed beside it. Jitabi will draft the sections from your description; Clara if you want to shape the wording conversationally.
A single send per guest or household, no repeat postings. Everything the guest needs is on the page, so the message can be short and stay correct.
Days before the deadline, trigger a reminder to the names still blank. One tap from you; a private nudge for them; the list updates itself from there.
Questions
The French still means please respond — the tapping is the responding. On a digital invitation the reply button is the RSVP card: it names the guest, says yes or no, and drops the answer straight onto a list, where a posted card might once have sat unopened on a hall table for a week.
Until the deadline you printed on the page — after that, the plan is fixed. A late yes can often still be squeezed in, but the courteous move is a message asking, not an arrival. A late no, on the other hand, is worth nothing to anyone; that one needs no apology at all.
Less rude than the alternative of a host guessing. A reminder sent privately to each unanswered name is polite mechanics; asking the same question again in front of a group chat is the genuinely rude version. The etiquette test is only this: chase the absence quietly, and thank the presence publicly.
Yes. Because the page can be edited anytime, an extended deadline is visible to everyone the moment you change it — including guests holding a link forwarded weeks earlier. Say so in a message to anyone near the answer, and the invitation stays honest.
It happens on paper too; the difference is that a page knows. QR check-in at the door keeps the real count as the night starts, which settles the quiet arguments about chairs and cake after the fact, gently and with receipts.
Get Started
Notice enough, complete detail, a deadline that means something. Start free, send once, and let a reminder do the chasing so you never have to.
