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Destination wedding rsvp's

posted 3 years ago in Paper

Member

13 posts

Newbee

dog mom 4-25-09

Our destination wedding is in Hilton Head Island, SC. What are the acceptance rates for invited guests VS actual number attending? for destination weddings? Thanks

3 years ago

Member

78 posts

Worker bee

mrstye 11/9/08 Washington, DC

I think it can really vary widely depending on just how much of a destination it is, and how many you're inviting. General rule of thumb for weddings is about 75%-80% accept. If you're inviting only very close friends and family, it'll be higher. If most people are traveling across the country, rather than just from the northeast or something, it'll likely be lower. There are lots of factors to consider.

We did a DW in Texas. Most guests were from Maine, DC, and Florida. Even only inviting immediate family, grandparents and close friends, we had about 30 people of about 40 invited - 75%. For one person it was cost, two couples had young kids, so traveling was out, and another couple already had travel plans.

3 years ago

Member

43 posts

Newbee

Heath24 Oct 22, 2009

I've always heard for DW's the responses are usually 50-60% yes. But it can totally vary depending on date of wedding, cost, and how much notice you give people I think.

3 years ago

Hostess

2,683 posts

Sugar bee

suzanno 7/12/08 Richland, WA

It completely depends. My sister had what was a DW for everybody in our family (although it was actually just where she lives) and she had over 85% acceptance - but she had it over Thanksgiving, when people with regular jobs have time off anyway, she lives in a fabulous place that everybody wanted to visit, and quite a bit of my family farms, so they plan on taking some kind of vacation about that time of year anyway.

Hilton Head is pretty nice - so if your guests generally have the money and time to go, you may get very high acceptance.

The other factor, as MrsTye says, is that for a DW you often invite a smaller number of people - closer friends and more immediate family - than you would to a non-DW. That tends to reduce the number of negative responses you would normally get just because your wedding is really not all that important to some percentage of the people on your list.

Rather than looking at statistics, we found that looking at our actual guest list predicted fairly well. We had some close family who we knew were probably not healthy enough to travel, some family who are just anti-social in general, some friends that we knew would have difficulty with the time off work or travel or both, and some people that we knew wouldn't miss it for the world. We were only really surprised by the responses in a few cases.

3 years ago

Member

20 posts

Newbee

TheStylishScribe 6/14/08 reno, nv

I do a lot of destination weddings, they normally seem to get about 50-60%. Some though have gotten more than they expected. I had a destination wedding myself too and I had almost 80% of the people I invited came! If you send out a save the date it might help you get a preliminary response as to how many people might come to help you with your planning!