How many guests are coming to your wedding?

[Codie]

My guest list is just plain overflowing and really stressing me out as it is going to severely limit the "extras" that we can do. So I'm just curious as to how many people everyone is inviting and where you made the cuts? We want all of our family AND our friends to come...but what about family you hardly ever see?

 

[ead79]

We had 78 people attend our wedding. One of the ways that you might cut guests is to not invite coworkers (either your or your parents’). Also, we did not invite extended family, just parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles (a few first cousins also attended). I would just be fair with who you exclude (in other words, don’t invite the first and second cousins on your side, then only invite the first cousins on his side) so feelings aren’t hurt. We found that most people understood that we needed to have a reasonable guest limit to keep within our budget.

 

[JoD]

We had 100 guest at our Wedding. We invited immediate family, aunts & uncles, a few first cousins and our very close friends. We had a great response from the others we could not invite, they all understood. We decided to get married in Disney so we could invite only the most very special people that we wanted to be with us on our special day.

 

[twojo21]

we are having 55 guests at our custom wdw wedding. we limited our list to family only with the exception of 2 friends in our bridal/groom party. alot of people came out of the woodwork when we announced our engagement & wedding plans including extended family (2nd cousins, family of family) and friends. we wanted a destination wedding though that was intimate & just who we wanted & everyone has been understanding. we are having a party with everyone once we move to our new home after the wedding though.

i agree with ead79 about coworkers they dont need to be invited unless you are friends & want them there. you need to just set limits & stick to your guns.

hope your wedding is everything you dreamed of, best of luck.

 

[Anthony1971]

we had 155 after inviting about 180 which was cut down from over 200
it is more fun
enjoy

 

[wildernessbride52105]

there will be 11 of us. we are having an at home reception with the rest of the family and our friends.

 

[bessjlj]

We are inviting approximately 100, but expect that actual attendees will be approx 30-40. Was anyone surprised with more people responding that they would be attending than originally expected? I am just wondering if people would be more likely or less likely to attend a destination wedding...I am guessing the latter.

 

[melmel]

We're having 10. That's actually more than I wanted I wanted 0, but was out-voted, so this is a nice compromise.

 

[twojo21]

bessjlj, i asked my em about response when estimating cost, etc. she said they get a high response to dw at wdw, normally in the 80% bracket of accepts. so you could be expecting like 80 guests, although every case can differ. hope that helps.

 

[Codie]

We had 100 guest at our Wedding. We invited immediate family, aunts & uncles, a few first cousins and our very close friends. We had a great response from the others we could not invite, they all understood. We decided to get married in Disney so we could invite only the most very special people that we wanted to be with us on our special day.

I think that is my problem...how do you isolate the "very special" people to you from those who THINK they are "very special" people. Like how do you invite some of your first cousins, but not all, etc?

 

[JoD]

bessjlj,
We invited 140 and 100 attended. Our EM told us to keep the list to the people we really want to attend because you can expect a high showing. I talked to family and friends before hand to try and get an idea of who would come.

 

[Codie]

We are inviting approximately 100, but expect that actual attendees will be approx 30-40. Was anyone surprised with more people responding that they would be attending than originally expected? I am just wondering if people would be more likely or less likely to attend a destination wedding...I am guessing the latter.

SUPER SURPRISED! We've talked to about 100 of our prospective guests and only 11 have said no...we had anticipated about 25 of them definitely not coming--but they are definitely coming! It seems that Disney is not your NORMAL destination wedding, but rather a good excuse for everyone to take that vacation they've been waiting for!

 

[EvilinaDM101]

I keep getting yes they will come and then the next minute they make statements like "I can't afford to be there" blah blah blah. I'm almost to the point of changing everything and having an intimate!! It's stressful!! Especially when your own family is making statements like . . . do we get FREE accomodations OR free airline tickets?? (note my family is FULL of cheap crazy people) Oh and here is the kicker! Can we bring our friends with 10++ kids since it's at WDW and Mickey, Minnie and Stitch will be at your reception? And they wonder where the bridezilla comes from. . .

Shonnel
to this

 

[hmgolden]

We invited 180, and ended up with 76 people at our wedding, including about 13 kids. We had a lot of no's for finanical reasons. And DH's family is mostly older people (over the age of 70) and they all said they couldn't travel that far for a wedding. We were really happy with the size wedding we ended up with, even if it was about 30 people smaller then we were expecting.

 

[jennycee]

We invited everyone we would have invited if it were at home, about 260...we both have LARGE families. 140 people came down to Disney and about 110 stayed the whole week. We were going to have an at home reception but decided against it since we had such a large turnout. Instead we sent out announcements with our wedding photo to those who did not attend. It worked out well that way, they felt that they were included and had a snapshot of the day.

 

[bessjlj]

Wow, I guess I'm just really surprised at the numbers. I was thinking 30-40 but would budget for 50. For those with hight turnouts did your guests live far from the Orlando area? Most of ours will be coming from NY or TN. Plus, we are getting married January 7th so people might not be able to afford it just after the holidays. I'm interested to see what responses we get. How far in advance did you send save the dates (not the ones provided by DFTW) if you sent them?

 

[jennycee]

I would say only 8 people came from Florida, everyone else came from the NY/NJ area. We were married this past September 04, and I sent our STD out in October 03. We opted to not have Disney send theirs at all. You are getting married in this upcoming Jan, so if you send out your STD's very soon they will have at least 7 months to plan their trip, plenty of time. I know that 80% of our guests, not counting the bridal party booked within 2 months of recieving our STD's. I was shocked! I thought they would all wait until the last minute, but that helped take some of the pressure off towards crunch time. You will be asked a million questions!

 

[Codie]

We invited everyone we would have invited if it were at home, about 260...we both have LARGE families. 140 people came down to Disney and about 110 stayed the whole week. We were going to have an at home reception but decided against it since we had such a large turnout. Instead we sent out announcements with our wedding photo to those who did not attend. It worked out well that way, they felt that they were included and had a snapshot of the day.

We were planning on giving the option of the AT HOME reception on the Florida wedding invitation (sort of encouraging some to stay home)--how were you planning on doing your "at home" invites and at what point did you decide not to do the at home reception?

 

[jennycee]

I designed the at home reception invites to be the same as our wedding invites except the wording was more like that of an announcement and then the invitation:

Mother and Father would like to announce the marriage of their daughter to son in law on September 18, 2004 in Walt Disney World

Please join us in celebrating on .....

Once we saw how many returns came back as yes and got our head count of 142, we said forget it! that was too good of a turnout to even think about doing another reception, not to mention the second cost of another reception.