Wedding realistic attendance

[mimzy]

I know that the standard rule for weddings is that 10-20% don''t show, but i am having a hard time believing that 20 people out of our 215 invited won''t show. family accounts for more than half of it, and the rest is split between our friends and their dates, my mom/stepdad''s friends, my dad/stepmom''s friends and FI''s parents friends.i can''t imagine our friends not coming, and i''m pretty sure that our parents friends would come too, because we''ve known them for a long long time. our wedding is the saturday before christmas, if that makes any difference.

for those of you who had large weddings, what was your attendance rate? were you surprised at how many people did or didn''t show/respond as attending?

i''m nervous because it''s been a nightmare trying to get the guest list together and fairly divy up the friend invites among parents, so i just sort of said screw it and added fifteen more people than we had originally set our limit at (215 invited, budget set for 200). if 215 come it''s 650 over budget....which is a lot of money for us. what should i do?

 

[tberube]

I know, I feel the same way. EXACT same way. I'm not having a "large" wedding, but I invited about 15% more people than I have the budget for, taking the advice that some people won't show. But now that I look at my list and think about it, I can't think of any possibility that anyone wouldn't come! We invited only close friends and family members, and I've always felt that it's only distant people that would turn down a wedding invite. I really hope that I won't go 15 people over my 100 mark, or else I'll be paying a lot more out of pocket (to the tune of $975!!)

ETA: Our wedding is the weekend after labor day, and my florist told me that in his experience, there is always a huge turnout for weddings around labor day. Who would have thought?

 

[mimzy]

Date: 5/2/2008 10:47:17 AM
Author: tberube
I know, I feel the same way. EXACT same way. I''m not having a ''large'' wedding, but I invited about 15% more people than I have the budget for, taking the advice that some people won''t show. But now that I look at my list and think about it, I can''t think of any possibility that anyone wouldn''t come! We invited only close friends and family members, and I''ve always felt that it''s only distant people that would turn down a wedding invite. I really hope that I won''t go 15 people over my 100 mark, or else I''ll be paying a lot more out of pocket (to the tune of $975!!)


ETA: Our wedding is the weekend after labor day, and my florist told me that in his experience, there is always a huge turnout for weddings around labor day. Who would have thought?

that''s exactly how i''m feeling! i''m sending out the save the dates tomorrow, so this is sort of a do or die moment!

 

[sumbride]

Timing is everything. The Saturday before Christmas is quite frequently double and even triple-booked for people, so those that really really want to be there to spend the day with you WILL be. The "excess" people, if you have any, may not be able to make it. Things come up, so try not to be hurt if some people can''t make it. Our wedding was the same day as a very important football game in my hometown area, so we lost about 20% to that, but we had an extremely large guest list and I was FINE with it. They would have liked to be at my wedding, sure, but miss the UT-OU game for it? NO WAY! They bought their tickets 3 years ago! or whatver...

so you can definitely be sure that you will have so "No''s" but if you''re absolutely counting on a certain number, I''d re-work the plans. That''s a Murphy''s law situation.

 

[oobiecoo]

I was skeptical about the 10-15% but it worked out to be about that many not coming to ours. Ours is mostly family so I thought it was strange but some people just weren''t able to fly in... and for the people who live close.... well, I''m not sure why they can''t come!

 

[rockzilla]

Yeah, there are a lot of reasons why family or close friends might not be able to come. If there''s a couple, one half of the couple may have another family committment far away. Or there may be an important work event or training that they can''t miss. Or they have to take their daughter to interview at a college far away. Or maybe it''s their 10th wedding invitation this year and they just can''t afford/take the time to travel. There are a lot of reasons where people might have to make trade offs for things that just absolutely can''t be rescheduled.

 

[violet02]

My wedding planner said 10-15% for local weddings and up to 20% for destination weddings.

She said out of all of the weddings she''s ever done there was only one wedding where only two people didn''t show up. Every other wedding fell right into that category.

I invited about 20% more than what we''d ideally like and budgeted for (70) but I can have up to 80 people. As it stands I think about 10 relatives on my FI''s side aren''t going to show up even though they haven''t said so yet (thats word among the rest of the family) and we''d have originally thought they''d have come. Some folks just can''t afford to fly all the way across the country or have lots of kids to look after etc. We have family friends that have a yearly trip at that time who we know won''t come also.

 

[sunnygirl]

First we planned for ~125 then we changed it to 150. But we ended up sending Save the Dates to about 190!! I really dont know if 40 people will end up not coming but the wedding is semi-destination so I''m hoping that will help. Plus the hotels in Santa Barbara are expensive and all require a 2 night minimum and book up super fast so if people arent on top of reserving their rooms, it might help our numbers. I did visit the reception hall again and it looks like we can squeeze about 170 in there. So stressful!

 

[mimzy]

thanks everyone for your input! i''d say that less than 10% of our guests are from out of town and virtually all of them are family so they would be coming in for the holidays anyhow. BUT i''m thinking that the high profile weekend might be our saving grace and prevent some people from being able to attend. i guess we''ll see!

 

[Pandora II]

I think it depends on the sort of people you are inviting and how close they are. If a lot are random distant cousins its less likely than if they are important friends.

I sorted out most of the ''no''s via the STDs - all of whom I knew wouldn''t come (orthodox jewish - Saturday wedding).

Our friends are very reliable and my parents friends even more so. Relatives are all defs. At the most I would think 1 or 2 might not show on the day out of 120.

 

[musey]

Date: 5/2/2008 2:31:02 PM
Author: mimzy
thanks everyone for your input! i''d say that less than 10% of our guests are from out of town

Lucky!! I am so jealous of that. We have about 10% IN-town, ugh!

Even so, I think we''ll have significantly less than the 10-20% no-shows. I think that if you''re inviting more than you can realistically pay for, you''re asking for trouble! We budgeted for 100% attendance, and if we have less, then there won''t be any "aw, MAN, I wanted to spend that extra $120pp!!" Yanno?

 

[cara]

We invited 180, estimated between 80-120 would actually come, and had just over 100 guests. But many invitees were from out-of-town. We made a detailed spreadsheet and gave each guest an estimated likeliness of attending. We were pretty spot on (with a few curveballs that canceled each other out), but we were prepared for being on either end of our estimated range.

Assuming you will keep people from adding on uninvited guests, it is unlikely but possible that you will have less than 10% decline. Make sure that if the unlikely happens, you could actually accommodate them (ie. the venue is big enough, the bill could get paid somehow even if it would hurt).

I'd approach is as a risk management problem. For example, say that there is a 20% chance that you get only 0-5% declines. Would you be completely screwed?? If so you might need to change your invite list, or reserve money from the budget to cover this unlikely but possible outcome. Kind of like reserving money for an unlikely but possible car repair.

Given that your list is so heavily in town, and you see almost all your invitees making a substantial effort to attend, maybe planning on 20% declines is unrealistic. My cousin did have this problem at her (mostly in-towners) wedding. I *think* she was in the range of 5-10% declines. Space was tight for eating, but luckily it was not a sit-down dinner.

 

[Elmorton]

Invited: 140-150, not really sure.

Showed: 123 (125 RSVPed to come)

We had about 10 that we knew wouldn''t show (hmmm, like my mom''s great cousin who called to ask who we were - I wish I were kidding...a few weeks before invites were to go out, my mom decided that everyone she was distantly related to needed to be invited).

I was actually surprised though that so many couldn''t come, especially since 100 of the guests were given Save the Dates, and our wedding was rather small - we have a small families (about 80 total family members, both of us combined) and our parents did a pretty good job of only inviting close friends (as did we).

I think that 20% rule is a safe bet, really.

 

[Haven]

This is a great thread, as I''ve been wondering the same thing myself.

We invited 198 adults and 14 children. So far, we''ve received 11 "We cannot wait to celebrate with you!" responses and zero negatives, and our invites just went out on Monday.

We''ve received some verbal responses:

Two of my closest friends cannot attend (SOB!), one is a costume designer and JUST found out her show is traveling to Egypt during the wedding, the other works for the White House and was denied the time off to come here.

Four of FI''s friends will be out of town.

So that makes 11 attending, 8 declining thus far. We''re marrying on the Fourth of July so I imagine we''ll have more people going out of town than the average date.

I''ll let you know what ends up happening in July. I hope everyone else can make it, I''m so sad every time someone tells us they can''t attend. We definitely didn''t invite people hoping that some of them wouldn''t be able to attend. We want everyone there to celebrate with us!

 

[Class n Sass]

I am getting married in 3 weeks from today. I invited 217 people and I have about 170 that are coming. I was sure that I would get no more than about 10 declines but I was surprised...and my pockets are happy

 

[swimmer]

I was stressing like you till a few weeks ago. Our wedding is semi-destination, with about 70% of the invitations going to people who have to fly across the country. I think that makes a huge difference. We invited 327 and now have 228 who have rsvp''d in the affirmative. Can I tell you how I stressed over this? Our max number before the fire marshal (my cousin) has to legally turn people away is 250, so we just make it with the band, catering staff, etc. And of course some last minute people will not come, esp with airlines these days.

My advice is to not stress over things you cannot control. Easier said than done, but darn it, that was wasted freak out on my part.

 

[mimzy]

after reading everyone''s responses i think that we''ll be fine. we don''t have distant ANYONE coming; it''s all first cousins or closer so that''s what made me doubt the whole 15-20% rejection rate, but it sounds like it works itself out to about that regardless.

IF we have more than 200 attend it won''t be the end of the world. there''s more than enough room in the venue and the extra cost wouldn''t bury us (probably be about $500).

There''s nobody on mine and FI''s list that i would prefer it if they didn''t attend, but in all honesty i am not going to be all that heartbroken if some of my parent''s invites don''t attend (although they probably will because it is all close friends of theirs that are invited...). oh well. such is the life of a bride that accepts money from multiple sets of parents!

 

[Independent Gal]

Between the two wedding parties, we invited a total of 125. Of those about 50 were ''in town'' and of those in-towners, only 1 wasn''t able to come (she was chairing an international meeting in Japan). About 20% of the out-of-towners weren''t able to come. And of those, most were ''courtesy invites'' to people we pretty much knew weren''t coming.

 

[Independent Gal]

Here are some of the reasons people ended up not coming to our wedding who we were pretty sure would, just so you see that stuff comes up that is uncontrollable:

- sky-rocketing ticket prices / job uncertainty
- dying of cancer / wife dying of cancer (this lady died last week... she was only 60.)
- moving day already scheduled the day before, accompanying weird pet troubles, 3000 mile trip back, way too much chaos
- chairing an international (read: not moveable) meeting abroad on a subject of international importance
- new husband's daughter getting married the same day
- had a stroke / mother had a stroke

So, you see, life happens. Even around a wedding. Which is why even people who love you may find themselves unable to come.

 

[SarahLovesJS]

Thanks for posting this question! I''ve been worrying about this myself.