How to manage RSVPs and cancellations for a party

22 September 2026 · 5 min

The number you hand the kitchen is not the number of people you invited, and it is not the number who said yes either. It is the number who will sit down and eat, and travelling from the first figure to the last is a job with a date attached to it.

Most of the difficulty comes from doing that job in the wrong order. Replies arrive in four different places over six weeks, the quiet guests get chased the week before, and then somebody points out that three of your yeses arrived with a child whose age nobody asked for.

Keep every reply in one list

Invitations go out on paper or by email, and the answers come back by text message, by phone, in a comment under a Facebook event and through your mother at the supermarket. None of that is a problem until you try to add it up.

One list, one row per household, kept wherever you will actually open it. The columns that matter:

• who the household is, and one phone number for it
• adults coming
• children aged 5 to 12
• children under 5
• anything they cannot eat, in their own words
• replied yes, replied no, or still silent, and the date they answered

The children are split out because the bill and the kitchen both treat them differently. Children aged 5 to 12 pay half the menu price, though the ages matter on your own list for a plainer reason: a row saying four people with no ages on it can neither be priced nor cooked to. The smallest guests usually eat from a parent's plate anyway. The shape of the pricing is easier to follow once your list is built this way round.

Set two deadlines, one of them only for you

Ask the venue, in writing, for the date the final numbers are due and what may still change after it. Then put your own reply-by date on the invitation at least a week earlier. That gap is not slack. It is the week you spend on the phone to the six people who have not answered.

For a confirmation or a christening the invitation often goes out months ahead, so add a checkpoint in the middle: a short message that says the date is coming, here is the time, tell me now if anything has changed. Half the drop-outs you would have met on the day turn up in that reply instead.

Ask for more than yes or no

A reply that only says yes has left three questions unanswered. Ask for all of it at once, on the invitation, so nobody is chased twice.

• Ages for any child. One line, and the whole headcount becomes priceable.
• What a guest cannot eat, rather than a tick box. Vegetarian is easy here, because any menu can be made fully vegetarian. The harder cases are the ones a box never captures, so ask for the wording the guest would use themselves and pass it on. There is a fuller guide to allergies and special diets.
• Whether they are staying for the whole evening. Some guests come for the reception and leave before the meal, which is a different number again.

None of this is nosiness. A guest list of 60 that resolves into 48 adults, 9 children and 3 people who cannot eat dairy is something our kitchen can plan a Saturday around. A list of 60 names is not.

The silent guest, and the late no

At your own deadline, silence becomes a no. Before it does, ring once. A call that says you need to give the kitchen a number on Friday gets an answer where a fourth group message does not.

Then the late cancellation, which will happen anyway. Flu in February, a shift that could not be swapped, a car that would not start. Two things are worth knowing in advance so the evening is not spent recalculating.

The first is that a drop does not move every line of the bill equally. Booking the hall carries a 30-guest minimum: the hall fee is billed for 30 guests even when fewer come, while the menu and the drinks are charged per actual guest. So a party falling from 44 to 40 changes the food and drink, not the room. A party of 26 is genuinely welcome, and pays the hall fee as though it were 30.

The second is that a buffet absorbs a change that a plated dinner cannot, because a plated course is counted out one plate at a time. If your list is still moving in the last fortnight, that is an argument worth weighing when you choose between a buffet and a served dinner.

The final week

Send the number, the ages and the dietary notes together, in one message, and keep the copy. Our kitchen is in the same building as the hall on Højdevej, so a change in the last days is a conversation with the people who will be cooking that evening rather than an amendment sent to a supplier elsewhere in the city.

Hold the seating plan until the deadline has passed, then build it once from the final list rather than redrawing it every time somebody answers. That is a much shorter evening's work, and the seating plan guide assumes you are working from settled numbers.

Still choosing a date, or want to see the room before the invitations go out? Book a visit to the hall on Højdevej 59, or call us on +45 21 95 92 92 and we will talk through what your list needs.