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i think it depends on certain things. what day is your wedding? is it on a holiday? are there a lot of oot guests? we have a sunday evening wedding, and it's a small ceremony so not many people are invited to that part. not many of our oot guests were willing to come for it. (which sadly i was ok with, i wanted a small wedding!). we invited 145, and we have about 95 coming.
I think as a general rule of thumb you can expect about a 10-30% decline rate, but that is just in general. For an individual event you could have 100% attendance or 50%, you just never know!
I actually made another guest list for myself to try and reflect our 'truer' numbers. I put the people we invited who are not likely to come (i.e., my friend who lives in Germany!) and gave them a 90% decline rate. I pulled all the people who are 'iffy' (i.e., people we aren't as close with, people who would have to travel a very, very long way,) and assumed that at least half of them won't come, plus maybe 5% off the 'regular' guest list, as some people are always going to have the random conflict.
i think artbee is right--there are a lot of things you need to consider. you are also the best judge of your own guest list. i've heard of a silly 20% rule (20% of invited guests will rsvp "no") but for my own wedding i knew that would never happen. i had 190 invites and 178 "yes" guests (but i expected this, even though almost all were OOT). like circus peanut said---you really never know!
I am actually only invited 67 families with a total of about 130 or so folks, most are from out of town and if for example one family says no, that's like loosing 5 folks at once, so even if 10% says no that's a huge number of folks
I've heard to expect as many people as invitatoins you send out. That doesn't mean that everyone will say yes but if you send out 125 invitations then you could probably expect about 125 people including spouses etc. Does that make sense?
like.... we sent out 200 invitations but each invitation was usually to 2 or even more people.... and we had about 200 people there.
There is no magic number, despite what people say otherwise. Be prepared for 100% attendance.
I agree that you need to be prepared for 100% (it COULD happen!). I heard the 20% regrets guideline, but it really depends on how you make your guest list. We mainly invited people we knew would come and predicted in advance who would and wouldn't. There were a couple of surprises, but only a difference of about 4 people from what we expected.
I've heard that 10% decline, not too sure. I'm hoping for the same, I know it sounds bad, but there are some people who I have to invite but don't really care for and it's mostly extended family. Good luck!
Thanks everyone! I guess there is no sure-fire way to plan it. If we start getting alot of no respsonses, we have some backups. If everyone responds yes, than I better get working on the street corner ;)
Kidding of course... but my god that is alot of extra money!
What we did, which worked quite well, is to have three counts, Excel or Google Docs is great for this:
1) Make a list of everyone you plan to invite and count them up (160 people in our case). This is your absolute maximum.
2) Mark people in red you are fairly certain won't come and count them up (elderly people who can't travel, friends who live out of the country, etc.). Subtract this from your maximum. This is the number we planned around (130 in our case).
3) Mark people who are "maybes" in yellow (people who haven't talked to in years, people who live out of state) and count them up. Subtract this from #2, this is your minimum (110).
This gave us a range of numbers to work with and we were able to make plans that suited all three numbers. It's worked beautifully!
Also, don't disregard your maximum, because even if you're sure those people can't come other guests might bring uninvited children or an uninvited guest or you may have a last minute addition to the list.
Honestly, you can never tell. I sent out my invites a month ago and I've been steadily receiving RSVP's and they are all yes's. I was originally shooting for 120 people and I sent out around 135. Now, I'm just bumping my number to 140 because I don't think I'm gonna have no's anytime soon. But that said, I don't have a b-list.
Good luck dear! :)
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OK, so everyone I know... my mother, other married friends and my wedding planner (my assistant at work has taken on this role because she wants to do it for a living someday) tell me that not everyone will RSVP yes and to invite more than what we expect.
Our minimum is 125 people and we are invited 155. I know it sounds horrible, but I hope they all don't RSVP yes!
We are paying a hefty price per head and now I am second guessing adding the b-list into the A list.
Anyone have an thoughts?