There were some invites we knew would be declined - my aunt in Sweden and my grandma in MI couldn''t travel. Then there were a few people who couldn''t come because of other obligations, but not many. Overally we were in the 10-25% range, but there were very few declines that we didn''t expect.
I just did the math on how many people have declined so far and it's about 17%. There are just about 20 people who we have either spoken to and they're not yet sure, or have not heard from yet. I think we'll probably end up in the 20% range when we hear from everyone. My guests are coming from all over the US, Canada, England, Switzerland, Holland, France and the Caribbean, so I think given the distances, we were bound to have as many declines as we have, in addition to the fact that our guestlist is a bit on the large side.
We invited 300 people and had about 180 (maybe a little more?) at our wedding last June. We have a ton of out-of-state and international friends and family, and with the recession, we weren''t expecting an overwhelming response. I actually ended up being very happy we were able to stay within our budget .
we had one couple ''decline'' (we had to chase that one up) and my friends partner couldn''t make it as he was away with work, so 3 people out of nearly 60 wasn''t many!