MemberFor your RVSP cards, the bride is supposed to stamp them, but what if the person lives out of the country? Can you buy foreign postage? Are they supposed to get the stamp themselves in that case? If I put US postage on it, wili it make it to me?
MemberI think it would be okay to not put a postage on there and have them send it themselves. You can have a small insert that says something along the lines of "For convenience, you may email your reply to blah blah blah." That way, they don’t have to go out of their way to send in their rsvp.
MemberIf you put US postage on an RSVP being sent from elsewhere, it definitely WON’T make it to you. We are in Canada and are inviting a lot of folks in the US and UK, and our solution was to be vigilant about paying attention to when any friends might be going to the US or UK, or visiting us here from there–we were lucky enough to have one friend make a trip to the UK a few weeks ago, and she brought back stamps for us, and another friend from the US visited this past weekend and we got her to bring stamps as well. We are literally just missing one stamp now, for our family in France.
MemberWe sent out our RSVP’s with US postage on them (to Canada and Australia) without even thinking about it. OOps! I think the idea of an Email RSVP would be good for them.
Membermost of mine are going to be for canada. I think i’ll just ask my grandma to get us some postage, though it does seem silly for her to mail us postage, for us to mail it back and then for it to finally be used in Calgary where it was bought! I wonder if I can buy postage online for foreign countries.
MemberMy whole extended family lives in Canada and the UK, so I was in your situation too. Unless you can get your hands on stamps from their country, you are out of luck. U.S. postage is good only for mail originating from the U.S.
Personally I think it’s not too much to ask for someone to supply their own stamp when they live out of country. Back in the day, people were expected to write their own RSVP notes on their own stationary and send their response back this way to the bride’s parents, who were the traditional wedding hosts. So the canned response RSVP card is a modern invention and its pre-stamped nature but a nice gesture and convenience, not a requirement. If we wanted to be super attentive to etiquette, we wouldn’t send RSVP cards at all. 🙂
But one has to go only so far in accommodating your out-of-country guests. If you can get your hands on foreign stamps, great, but otherwise I wouldn’t sweat it. The cost for you to acquire a foreign stamp (having them shipped to you at international-rate postage) far exceeds the cost for them to buy a stamp. If anyone grouses at it, I say tough cookies! If they can’t spare the money for a stamp, I doubt they will be traveling to your wedding anyway, right? 🙂
MemberGreat question! I hadn’t thought about this! I like the email idea a lot. I also wonder about ordering foreign stamps online. I’m going to look it up! We need stamps from Australia, Greece, England, and Canada!
MemberI was just pondering this very issue yesterday, so thanks for all the helpful tips. We have invites going to Finland, Canada, the Netherlands and Hong Kong. It’s fun to see everyone list the faraway lands where they’re sending their wedding invites!
MemberI hadn’t even thought about this. Thanks for posting or I would have just put US postage on my foreign invites too.
MemberHere’s a post from a previous bride with the same question. From what I could find on the USPS website, you can buy postage specific to that country & put it on the return envelope – for most countries a 94 cent airmail stamp will suffice (you can just buy those at the post office).
http://boards.weddingbee.com/topic/international-rsvp-postage
Thanks for posting this as most of my family invites will be international too & I had completely forgotten about that.
Be sure to write AIRMAIL on the front of the return envelope too.
MemberI got stamps from Ireland for my Irish RSVPs from irishstamps.ie It just cost the price of the stamps and <$1 shipping!
MemberGood to know you can order foreign stamps online. Every invitation I’ve received to an American wedding has had USPS stamps on the reply card, that I have then covered with a French stamp to send. I would either try to purchase them online or not stamp the card at all, save your money!
MemberI’m going to ask my cousin to bring some Canadian stamps down for me when we meet for another cousin’s wedding in November.
MemberYou can have foreign guests RSVP on your website, through e-mail or by phone. I think that’s the way I’ll be going for my foreign guests. I probably won’t even get an RSVP card printed for them.
MemberO no this thought didn’t even cross my mind. We invited one guest from Germany. Hopefully she won’t mind, and be able to put her own on it. Now I feel bad.
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