Our wedding is August 15th and both of our families will have to travel, therefore I am about to send out our invites giving 12 weeks for people to make travel plans. Now in my final steps I am struggling to come up with an appropriate date to have the response cards returned. I know playing it safe for most people would be 4 weeks from the wedding giving 2-3 weeks before final head count it due. I think we need closer to 8 weeks to plan because our situation is a little sticky. My fiancé's family does not understand RSVP or response cards of any kind. When they have weddings they send an invite to the head of the family and then assume everyone under that person is coming and bringing their friends... ending up with 500+, they think! Well, we are having a sit-down dinner and need a final head count. So any suggestions on how long I should give them to respond before we know we should start contacting them? (I was thinking giving them 3 or 4 weeks to respond from when I send out the invitations.) PLEASE HELP!