Invite outcome?

[PoSh HuNnY]

For those of you who already had your wedding at WDW...how many people did you invite & how many actually came? My biggest issue in making a decision right now is, "Will people come?!"

TIA!!!!

[lurkyloo]

It depends on a lot of factors. I could tell you that we invited 55 people and 34 came, but you'd also have to know that 60% of them live on the West Coast and only about 4 of them had ever been to WDW or were even interested in the Disney parks.

If you live on the East Coast and your families both make regular pilgrimages to WDW, your response rate is going to be a lot higher than mine.

[PoSh HuNnY]

Thanks for replying! I live in NY, so Orlando is only a 2 hour flight..this is also a big factor with an island...most islands are 4-4.5 hour flights from here, so people would have to take more time off from work...with Disney, they may not have to take any days off, or maybe just 1. I'm the only Disney nut...it's not like my whole family is, but many people in my family have been there at some point.

[lurkyloo]

I'll bet you have a pretty high response rate. The good thing is, you can really adjust it a lot during the planning process. If you're doing a room block, that can change size up until a few months out, and your guest count for food doesn't have to be in til 3 days before. Disney is very flexible.

[kkbutterfly]

Hi! We're in NY as well, nice 2.5 hour direct flight for cheap! We invited 40 people (that included a few single friends plus 'guests') and 27 rsvped yes (25 came because my aunt and uncle backed out week of due to a medical emergency but they had every intention of going along with non refundable flights). We did however invite a few people we knew were not going to come (they invited us to their destination wedding that we didn't attend so we invited them to ours), but we also had a few surprises of people we didn't expect to come show up (which was absolutely delightful).

[PoSh HuNnY]

Did you have a weekday wedding or weekend? There's such a big difference in price! A Thursday wedding is a $12k minimum for 2013..Friday or Sunday is $15k & Sat. is $20k! Do you know where I can find breakdowns of costs of weddings? I've seen them in past..just can't seem to find them now when I could really use them! lol

[princesswendy720]

We are in NJ. We invited around 70 and 43 came.

[PoSh HuNnY]

Thank you so much for your replies! lurkylo..thank you for share your budget link- i'm getting on that right now!

princesswendy..where did you have your reception? right now..if we invite everyone we have on list, it would be about 100 people...My top choice is reception at GF

[geek+nerd]

We sent out a pre-RSVP asking people if they knew they would come, they weren't sure yet, or definitely knew they couldn't make it. It helped us weed people off the invite list since we did an Escape wedding and could only invite 18.

[PoSh HuNnY]

geek+nerd..that is definitely a good idea that I would consider doing..

[belle2211]

We invited 165 and 95 came

[PoSh HuNnY]

Whoa Belle! Where do you live? Does most of your family live there?
Where did you have your wedding? Do you have a journal or report?

[Emily11212]

We invited about 130 and 55 came. We went with that big a number b/c at least 30 of them were people on my husband's side who I was told would definitely not come, we just needed to extend the invite (and he was true to that word!). We thought we would have around 80... but more and more of my friends found they couldn't afford the trip. As much as I missed a lot of them, it ended up well in our favor... at 55 we just hit our budget. I can't imagine what we would've done if we had to pay for another 25! It took us awhile to get our budget in order, lol.

[belle2211]

Originally Posted by PoSh HuNnY

Whoa Belle! Where do you live? Does most of your family live there?
Where did you have your wedding? Do you have a journal or report?

I live here in Orlando and while maybe 20 of our friends that came to the wedding live here, no one else does. My immediate family is from Jacksonville so had them and some of my parents friends from there, but have extended family in Virginia and DH's family is from Denver. And then random people from all over.

Our ceremony was at the Wedding Pavillion, our cocktail hour was in Whitehall Room and Patio and our reception was in one of the Grand Floridian Ballrooms.

And I do have a planning journal! It's below in my signature

Let me know if you have any questions or I can help with anything!!

[NeverlandClub23]

We invited about 65 (I don't know the exact number because we kept inviting people after the initial 30 or so invites went out) and 30 came. The funny thing is after the invites went out we had about 50 verbal yes's, but when it came down to actually sending the response card in a lot of those yes's were no's. About 55 of the 65 invited were family. We got married December 10th. I let people know verbally about a year in advance, sent a pre-wedding newsletter in July, sent actual invitations in September with November 1st RSVP deadline, and a final newsletter mid November. We, and most of our guests, live in Virginia. We did have some come from NC and TX.

A big chunk of them (14) are taking a family trip to WDW next summer so they didn't come. We're having an "at-home" reception in a few months (that I have no desire to plan) and I anticipate about 75-100 people coming to that.

I had two bridal showers and decided against an engagement party (but my MIL wanted to throw one). We didn't get any gifts at the actual wedding, but we did get 2-3 cards with some cash.