Two years ago I wrote Regularly Scheduled, a tool to make it easier for people to handle repeated events:

I mostly use it for a recurring dinner we host with some friends from college. It works well, and has been running with basically no maintenance. After twice now forgetting I was hosting dinner in the few days between RSVPing "yes" and people showing up at my house, however, I realized it needed to be sending reminder emails day-of. I added these today, and they look like:

They only go to people who RSVP'd yes; they're a reminder to come not a reminder to RSVP.

If you have an event you'd like to set up with it, feel free! Let me know if you run into any issues and I'll try to get the code back into my head.