RSVPs - by the numbers

[princesswendy720]

I'm getting ready to send out our Save the Dates and my guest list is uncomfortably larger than I'd like it to be. Funny how those cousins you never see really add up!

So to help me out, would you mind posting:
1. How many people you invited
2. How many RSVPed "yes"
3. Contributing circumstances - where you/your guests are from, how much notice they had about the wedding, etc.

Thank you!!

 

[lurkyloo]

I'm getting ready to send out our Save the Dates and my guest list is uncomfortably larger than I'd like it to be. Funny how those cousins you never see really add up!

So to help me out, would you mind posting:
1. How many people you invited
2. How many RSVPed "yes"
3. Contributing circumstances - where you/your guests are from, how much notice they had about the wedding, etc.

Well, just about nobody batted an eye at our Save the Dates, so here's the info on the responses to our invitations.

1. How many people you invited: 52
2. How many RSVPed "yes": 34
3. Contributing circumstances: About 70% of those invited live in California, so it was a long trek for them to Florida, but the majority of those who came were Californians. Also, our number of acceptances went up when we moved our date away from President's Day weekend to 2 weeks earlier. Interestingly, although we'd chosen the holiday weekend thinking it would help our guests out, many of them couldn't make it then, especially teachers, for some reason. I also suspect that the fact that airline and hotel prices were so high over the holiday had something to do with it - moving the date forward into Value Season knocked hundreds of dollars off travel.

 

[princesswendy720]

Thank you! We're not doing an RSVP with our save the dates, but I know I'll have to extend invites to everyone we send one to so I want to make sure I'm comfortable with a potentially high response rate.

 

[NicknNancy]

I'm getting ready to send out our Save the Dates and my guest list is uncomfortably larger than I'd like it to be. Funny how those cousins you never see really add up!

So to help me out, would you mind posting:
1. How many people you invited
2. How many RSVPed "yes"
3. Contributing circumstances - where you/your guests are from, how much notice they had about the wedding, etc.

Thank you!!

Invited: 122
Yes (so far): around 90
Circumstances: This is only our families!!! All of our guests live in Canada or overseas. We had to push the wedding back a year and that gave people more time to save. Also, a lot of people with kids are seeing this as a family vacation opportunity and are going. Plus...people love us! lol

 

[kharmagirl]

I'm getting ready to send out our Save the Dates and my guest list is uncomfortably larger than I'd like it to be. Funny how those cousins you never see really add up!

So to help me out, would you mind posting:
1. How many people you invited - 107. We left out children and +1's
2. How many RSVPed "yes" - 66
3. Contributing circumstances - where you/your guests are from, how much notice they had about the wedding, etc. Our guests had about 4.5 months notice. Many invited were from South Florida. Interestingly, many of them who were not family ended up not coming. We had people drive in from Charlotte and family fly in from Chicago and New York. A number of family members who could not make it either could not get the time off of work or had something planned already. Several of my girlfriends ended up coming without their husbands. There were actually a lot of people who told me they were coming and then ended up declining at the RSVP date. I don't know why and I didn't ask - at that point I saw the BEO's and was actually happy with the no's (shhhh - don't tell any of them that...)

Thank you!!

good luck

 

[MissManners]

We invited 185 (although FMIL just informed us the other day that she had invited people herself that we never sent invitations to , so the number is probably higher). On our BEO we planned for 150 guests, but I was assuming the number would be closer to 120 because everyone told us we could plan on about 30% of our guests declining since it was a destination wedding.

So far we have had 84 people RSVP yes, and 16 decline. Still waiting on 85+ responses. Half of our bridal party and family who I know are attending have not yet RSVPed (responses are due by Halloween), so I'm sure we will at least be hitting the 150 mark.

About half of our guests reside in Florida, and the rest are out of state. We sent out our save the dates about 10 months before our wedding date. If you are freaking about the guest list size, I would just err on the side of caution. Obviously if send someone a save the date, you have to send them an invitation, so I would refrain from sending them to any guests that you are on the fence about inviting. Definitely plan on having the vast majority of your guests attend so that you aren't stressing about budget or anything like that in the last couple months leading up to your wedding! HTH!

 

[belle2211]

Invited: 161
RSVPd yes: 91

We had a pretty short engagement-- 5 1/2 months. We are locals and so are our friends, but my immediate family is from a couple of hours away and then the rest is mostly Virginia. DH's family is mostly from Colorado/Arizona. Both families are pretty large and the same size. But sadly for DH's side of the family, it was only his immediate family and one couple that were his family's friends. None of his 10 aunts or uncles came. Boo! Although we estimated that we would probably have 130ish, I kept joking I would love to have right under 100 and that's what happened!

 

[librarygeek]

Invited: 128
RSVP'ed Yes: 91
(though we had about 10 people "un-RSVP" the week before so we really ended up with about 80)

Ours wasn't a destination wedding, but DH's family and many of our friends live about three hours from where we had the wedding. So most of the people that didn't come were from a few hours away. Save the dates were sent about 10 months in advance so that's how much notice they had; invites were sent three months ahead of time.

 

[mickin]

Invited: 106
RSVP yes: 77

Still have a couple of months so could go down. We have all the reply cards in so that number shouldnt go up

Origianlly thought we would have like 50-60.

 

[Bippi]

we just sent ours out and we cannot believe how quickly many have returned them! Still not due til nov 15

178 Including kids and plus 1s invited (77 total invites)
56 already confirmed yes's with room reservations!
13 no's
109 (29 invites) left to recieve

we originally were thinking we'd hit between 100-120 and BEO is planned at 120. Its gonna be close!

 

[DVC Bride 2011]

Originally we were going to invite about 65 people. This included immediate family on both sides (aunts, uncles, first cousins, etc) and very close family friends.

We figured out what we could afford vs. what elements we really wanted to have (ie: a dessert party, rehearsal dinner, etc). Before we sent out our save the dates, we cut 20 people from the list in order to have what we wanted. We cut my dad's family, mainly because I am not super close with them, and because one of his sisters blatantly told people around town that she would not go, and the other would not have gone because of the money, so we just cut them & their children and that took care of thirteen people off the bat. We also cut an additional 10 people who were relatives, but not super close to us.

We sent out the save the dates to 40 people. A few months later we sent out newsletters with pre-rsvp's because we needed to have a good idea for budgeting reasons. Three people said no at that point, leaving us at 39 people including us.

Right after the invites went out, DH's family completely backed out, bringing our numbers down to 32 including us.

I will say that I am really glad we cut our numbers. Weddings are so full of drama, and I am so grateful that the people we invited, albeit a small number of people, were family members and/or friends that truly cared about us and wanted to be with us on our wedding day. Had we invited the other family members (who, like you mentioned, are people we see once or twice a year) we would have had to cut really important elements from our day and to me it just wasn't worth it. I'd rather have a really great experience with less people than have to invite "extra" people just because I'm expected to. We did deal with some backlash from our decision, but I just stopped caring. It's your wedding day, so don't let anyone push you into inviting people if you don't want to. Just my 2 cents!

PS - we live in CT, so travel was a major factor for all of our guests. 29 guests came down from CT, and 3 came from TN.

 

[Nicole0504]

We decided to add a RSVP with our save the date just to get an idea and on it we put
yes
maybe yes
maybe no
no

If people put no then they did not get an invition unless we heard from them later and they said they wanted to attend.

Our wedding is in three weeks and we invited 150
attending= 120
but within the last week we have had three people call us and have to cancel.

 

[jnale]

I'm getting ready to send out our Save the Dates and my guest list is uncomfortably larger than I'd like it to be. Funny how those cousins you never see really add up!

So to help me out, would you mind posting:
1. How many people you invited
2. How many RSVPed "yes"
3. Contributing circumstances - where you/your guests are from, how much notice they had about the wedding, etc.

Thank you!!

It's been a while since I've been on this board! We just celebrated our 3-year anniversary since our Disney Wedding this past Tuesday! I can't believe it's been that long! Anyway...felt like I should start contributing on this board again....

1. We invited about 200 people (knowing fully well not all these people would be able to make it).
2. We had 96 RSVP "yes". We were supposed to have 100 people for our venue so we still had to pay for the 100 and ended up inviting some family friends that lived in Orlando.
3. Most of our guests (including ourselves) are from Maryland. We were going to charter a bus but ended up not having enough interest. Most of our guests came down on a train. We gave our guests about 18 months notice. Disney sent the Save The Dates about a year out if I remember correctly (someone correct me if I'm wrong), but we started around 18 months out by sending newsletters. Every 3 months or so we sent out a newsletter about different disney/wedding topics to try to encourage them to plan and prepare. We even had 2 family meetings to tell them about the wedding events, the hotels we booked, and to answer any questions they had. Our guests commented on how helpful the newsletters were - I highly suggest doing that. That was an idea I got from this board!

 

[ysprincess]

We just started getting our RSVPs back, so I can't really tell you where we are at number wise...but I just wanted to share that I had read in a few places (theknot, etc.) that you should expect 10-20% of invited guests to "respectfully decline".

Good luck!!

 

[xxliz28xx]

1. How many people you invited - Sent 100 invites but technically 200 were invited
2. How many RSVPed "yes" - 60 adults & 1 infant
3. Contributing circumstances - Family lives in NJ. My fiance & I live in Louisville, KY. I have friends & family in Florida but not many. Most, if not all, are coming from the tri-state area. They knew about the wedding since January so personally I'm surprised we don't have more coming.

 

[Icecoldpenguin]

Originally we were going to invite about 65 people. This included immediate family on both sides (aunts, uncles, first cousins, etc) and very close family friends.

We figured out what we could afford vs. what elements we really wanted to have (ie: a dessert party, rehearsal dinner, etc). Before we sent out our save the dates, we cut 20 people from the list in order to have what we wanted. We cut my dad's family, mainly because I am not super close with them, and because one of his sisters blatantly told people around town that she would not go, and the other would not have gone because of the money, so we just cut them & their children and that took care of thirteen people off the bat. We also cut an additional 10 people who were relatives, but not super close to us.

We sent out the save the dates to 40 people. A few months later we sent out newsletters with pre-rsvp's because we needed to have a good idea for budgeting reasons. Three people said no at that point, leaving us at 39 people including us.

Right after the invites went out, DH's family completely backed out, bringing our numbers down to 32 including us.

I will say that I am really glad we cut our numbers. Weddings are so full of drama, and I am so grateful that the people we invited, albeit a small number of people, were family members and/or friends that truly cared about us and wanted to be with us on our wedding day. Had we invited the other family members (who, like you mentioned, are people we see once or twice a year) we would have had to cut really important elements from our day and to me it just wasn't worth it. I'd rather have a really great experience with less people than have to invite "extra" people just because I'm expected to. We did deal with some backlash from our decision, but I just stopped caring. It's your wedding day, so don't let anyone push you into inviting people if you don't want to. Just my 2 cents!

PS - we live in CT, so travel was a major factor for all of our guests. 29 guests came down from CT, and 3 came from TN.

You are my hero! this is what I am doing as well. We are going to invite or send save the dates to right around 40 people.

then we will do a newsletter and try to get a temperature. the thing is though we know the small group we are inviting very well and we know they will all come so that helps. I cut my dad's family out but agreed to have a reception back home later. When I do this I will be able to drown them out with all of my friends and the rest of my mom's side that won't be getting a wedding invite.

Teresa

 

[SheriBerry]

1. How many people you invited - 135
2. How many RSVPed "yes" - 75 (would have actually loved for the number to be smaller )
3. Contributing circumstances: Friends and family were from all over the east coast. I think the biggest factor was that our wedding was on a Monday and many were unable to take the extra time off.