RSVP - How to Determine deadline date?

Mine is 3 weeks before my date. My venue needs final numbers one week before, so I gave myself two weeks to track people down and finalize everything. My hotel block expires on May 29th, so I just set that as the date. It's a Friday--I'm not sure it matters what day of the week it is. I just wouldn't have yours on a Sunday!

Too early (I would say more than 6 weeks at the most) and people aren't going to remember to return it or won't know what they're doing. Too close to your date and you'll run into problems tracking people down and doing a seating chart, place cards, etc.

Thanks everyone for your responses. Helps me out a great deal.

We made ours a month before our wedding date. The man that made our invites recommended that it be only 2 weeks before. We felt that was cutting jt to close. We want a buffer between the deadline and having to give our final head count. We know we are going to be hunting down RSVP responses

Find out when your caterer needs a headcount and tack on two weeks. That gave us enough time to contact the stragglers!

As for day of the week, I don't know if there is a best day. We made ours a Friday but didn't start contacting people until the following Tuesday, assuming some people would put their response in the mail Friday.

I'm trying to figure out this same thing. Most vendors want a final count 30 days in advance, and you'll want to account for late responses, so I think I'll go with 6 weeks before the wedding date. We're also planning on sending our invites out a little earlier than usual (is it usually 2 months before the wedding?), so an earlier RSVP seems like it should be feasible for people...