Funny wedding RSVP responses and replies

An RSVP collects three different kinds of thing, and humour is free on the first, welcome on the second and expensive on the third.

• The labels — The question and the two answers. This is wording, and wording can be as funny as you like at no cost whatsoever.
• The open note — One free-text box. This is where a guest is allowed to be funny back, and the only place a joke reply belongs.
• The counted answers — Attending or not, how many, which meal, what they cannot eat. Every one of these becomes a number on a caterer’s form. A joke here is a job for you in June.

One rule follows from that, and it is the only rule on this page that has a cost attached: a joke may never be the only way to answer a counted question. A reply option that is purely a punchline gives you a tick you cannot add up. Example two above is the way round it — three of its four options are funny, and all three mean yes.

On a digital invitation this is easier than it sounds, because the label and the data are separate things. Once the reply section is set to collect attendance, the two options in the Wedvite editor are editable text; they read “Yes, I’ll be there” and “Sorry, I can’t make it” until you change them, and whatever you write, the answer stored against that guest is still attending or not attending. You can call the yes “Accepts, and has already chosen an outfit” and your headcount does not move.

There is one setting to change before you write any of it, and it is the default rather than a trap you have to walk into. A new invitation opens with the simplest reply section there is: “Leave a message”, a name and a free-text note, with no attendance question at all. It is the most charming version and it counts nothing, so if you want a number, open the RSVP section’s options and switch it to Simple RSVP (yes or no, with an optional guest count and contact details) or Full RSVP (per-guest names, meals, dietary needs). Switch it first, rewrite the two answers second, and leave the note box as the funny part. Which questions are worth asking at all is the subject of wedding invitations with RSVP.

Those two lines are the oldest fixed phrases on any wedding stationery. They come from the reply card, where a guest wrote their own name into a gap — “M ______ accepts / declines” — and the third person and the parallel structure were doing the politeness so nobody had to compose a sentence. That is why they are the easiest thing on the whole card to make funny: they are already a form, and a form with one unexpected clause in it is a joke that needs no setup.

Four mechanics, in the order they matter.

• Keep the verb, add to it — “Accepts with pleasure, and will be there for the speeches.” The joke goes after the word that carries the meaning, never instead of it.
• Give the no a joke too — A funny yes beside a bare “declines with regret” makes declining feel like a confession. The kindest thing on a funny card is a no that is also allowed to be charming.
• Match their length and temperature — Two lines of roughly equal weight read as a pair. One short and one long reads as a preference, and guests notice which one you wanted.
• Make it a tick, not a composition — The guest’s job is still one mark. If your joke requires them to write a sentence back, you have moved the work onto ninety people.

The one thing to keep literal is the word itself. Somewhere in each option there has to be an “accepts”, a “declines”, a yes or a no that a tired person reading on a phone at midnight cannot misread. Everything after that is yours.

Shorter than they were, in the same register, and answering the feeling rather than the joke. A funny decline is almost always an apology in costume: the guest is upset about missing it and has made a joke so that you are not both sad in a small box. “We will miss you, and you are getting cake in the post” is the entire correct response. Do not try to win it.

Three practical rules. Answer every decline, within a week — a joke that goes unacknowledged reads as a joke that landed badly, and the sender will spend a month assuming it did. Answer in the channel they used, not a different one. And never screenshot a guest’s reply into a group chat, a story or a slideshow at the reception without asking them first; they wrote it to two people.

Read them in a batch rather than one at a time. On a paper reply card you get one funny line a day for six weeks and each one interrupts something; when the replies arrive in one table you can sit down on a Sunday with the whole run of them, which is when they are actually funny. The same table is where the boring numbers live — see the wedding RSVP website for what it collects and how it exports.

The pattern in all of these is the same: the line is funny to the couple and costs something to the person holding the card.

• An option that records nothing — “___ We will decide nearer the time” is not an answer, and it is the one people tick. Every option on the card has to resolve to attending or not attending.
• A joke where the meal choice goes — “___ Surprise me” on the menu line becomes a phone call to a caterer and a plate of something a guest cannot eat. Counted answers stay literal.
• Teasing the person who has to reply — “___ Will decide on the day, like a coward” is funny until the coward is your uncle, reading it alone, with no way to answer back.
• A “no” option that is embarrassing to tick — “___ I have something better to do” makes declining a small humiliation. A guest who cannot afford the flight will simply not reply at all, and you will chase them.
• A funny deadline — “Reply whenever, we are relaxed” costs you the final numbers. Keep a real date in numerals and be funny about what happens after it.
• A funny label on the names field — “And you are…?” above the names box returns nicknames, initials and one “the tall one from work” — which is then what you have to write on a place card. The line that feeds the seating plan stays plain.
• A joke that only half your guests can read — On a bilingual invitation, wordplay does not survive translation. Write the funny line in the language most of the list reads and keep the other version plain rather than machine-funny.
• A joke that leans on the invitation to land — A callback to the wording on the front does not survive the reply screen, which a guest often opens days later, on a phone, with the invitation closed. Every line in the reply section has to work on its own.

One test catches nearly all of them: hand the card to somebody and ask them to reply as if they cannot come. If they hesitate, or ask you a question, or tick nothing, the joke is in the way of the answer.