Wedding RSVP Etiquette

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I was invited to a friend's wedding via an FB event post about 6 weeks ago. I had no idea whether I would be able to attend for various reasons so I didn't confirm until... let's just say very late. When I did I was told that I had confirmed too late and all reservations were full. I was very surprised since on the event listing itself it said only 6 people had confirmed they were going (even though that would be highly unlikely for a wedding, even a small one) and the event description said to RSVP at your earliest convenience but didn't give a deadline to RSVP by so I didn't think there was any rush to confirm. Also the nature of the invite seemed a bit informal to me since it wasn't a DM or email or anything so I thought it was going to be more of a smaller group, intimate thing, if that makes sense.

Anyhow I feel kind of silly now that I didn't confirm earlier because apparently dozens of other people confirmed well in advance, I'm assuming personally, but I didn't think to do that. But I'm just wondering, is there typically a cutoff date given with wedding invites ("please RSVP by...") or is "earliest convenience" usually sufficient? Because to me that's kind of vague, to the point where if many people ended up confirming too late there would be planning and organization issues for the wedding (even if there were still spots for guests available). Or is it just me and most people are aware of the general deadlines without being informed?

That sounds like the kind of thing I'd have stumbled on.

I don't know if there's a convention for FB-mediated events. Best guess, the convention is supposed to be that people click a button to say they're going, and for some stupid reason others happened to use the less obvious route of a private message, causing you to miss the unstated deadline. I'd tend to blame the couple for not being clear.

ʕ´•ᴥ•`ʔ I think they should have been a lot more clear with their deadline. I feel like it is (or should be) more common to have something in the invite say "RSVP by xx/xx/xxxx."

I can understand if they had to inform the catering/venue with the amount of people by a certain date, but if that's the case, then they DEFINITLELY should have put a RSVP cut off date in the invite. ʕ – ᴥ – ʔ

How close were you cutting it when you sent in your RSVP? If someone said "at your convenience" I'd assume I could have at the latest a couple weeks before the event to RSVP since weddings are expensive.

Very late, to the point where if there were a cutoff it definitely would've been well before my RSVP. But the point is I wasn't even thinking that way at all for the reasons I gave, I honestly didn't even think the RSVP was necessary and more of a formality due to the nature of the invitation. Like lots of FB events have RSVPs but they're oftentimes optional, especially if there isn't a seating capacity, yet I was told there was no room left for me at the venue. What I think may have happened here was that they counted the last RSVP at the end of April as the cutoff and made arrangements based on that number (which I was told was around 50). So it's not like the place couldn't hold more people but that it was probably a seating issue with the dinner or something and them planning a specific number of courses and/or seats. Still the event attendance options kind of threw me off, I'm not used to those kinds of impersonal wedding invitations.